1 


4 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE   OF 

HENRY  MAITLAND 

A   RECORD  DICTATED  BY  J.   H. 


REVISED  AND  EDITED  BY 

MORLEY   ROBERTS 


HODDER  &  STOUGHTON 

NEW  YORK 

GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


^■7 


Copyright,    1912, 
By  George  H.  Doran  Company 


INSCRIBED 
TO  THE   MEMORY  OF 

MY    WIFE 


259916 


1^1 


PREFACE 

This  book  was  dictated  by  J.  H.  mostly  in  my 
presence,  and  I  consider  it  well  worth  publish- 
ing. No  doubt  Henry  Maitland  is  not  famous, 
though  since  his  death  much  has  been  written  of 
him.  Most  of  it,  however,  outside  of  literary 
criticism,  has  been  futile  and  uninstructed.  But 
J.  H.  really  knew  the  man,  and  here  is  what  he 
has  said  of  him.  We  shall  be  told,  no  doubt, 
that  we  have  used  Maitland's  memory  for  our 
own  ends.  Let  that  be  as  it  may;  such  an  accu- 
sation can  only  be  met  by  denial.  When  there  is 
no  proof  of  guilt,  there  may  well  be  none  of  in- 
nocence. The  fact  remains  that  Henry  Mait- 
land's  life  was  w^orth  doing,  even  in  the  abbrevi- 
ated and  censored  form  in  which  it  now  appears. 
The  man  was  not  eminent,  only  because  he  was 
not  popular  and  did  not  live  long  enough.  One 
gets  to  eminence  nowadays  by  longevity  or  by 
bad  work.  While  Maitland  starved,  X  or  Y  or 
Z  may  wallow  in  a  million  sixpences.  In  this 
almost  childishly  simple  account  of  a  man's  life 
there  is  the  essence  of  our  literary  epoch.  Here 
is  a  writing  man  put  down,  crudely  it  may  be, 


but  with  a  certain  power.     There  is  no  book  i 

quite  like  it  in  the  English  tongue,  and  the  critic  ! 

may  take  what  advantage  he  will  of  that  open-  | 
ing  for  his  wit. 

At  any  rate  here  we  have  a  portrait  emerging  | 
which  is  real.     Henry  Maitland  stands  on  his 
feet,  and  on  his  living  feet.     He  is  not  a  British 
statue  done  in  the  best  mortuary  manner.    There  i 
is  far  too  little  sincere  biography  in  English.  ' 
We  are  a  mealy-mouthed   race,  hypocrites  by  | 
the  grave  and  the  monument.     Ten  words  of  i 
natural  eulogy,  and  another  ten  of  curious  and  , 
sympathetic  comment,  may  be  better  than  tons  ; 
of  marble  built  up  by  a  hired  liar  with  his  ! 
tongue  in  his  cheek.     In  the  whole  book,  which 
cannot  be  published  now,  there  are  things  worth 
waiting  for.     I  have  cut  and  retrenched  with  \ 
pain,  for  I  wanted  to  risk  the  whole,  but  no  i 
writer  or  editor  is  his  own  master  in  England.  ; 
I  am  content  to  have  omitted  some  truth  if  I 
have  permitted  nothing  false.     The  reader  who  ; 
can  say  truly,  'T  should  not  have  liked  to  meet  | 
Henry  Maitland,"  is  a  fool  or  a  fanatic,  or  more  | 
probably  both.     Neither  of  those  who  are  pri-  ; 
marily  responsible  for  this  little  book  is  answer-  | 
able  to  such.     We  do  not  desire  his  praise,  or  I 
even  his  mere  allowance.     Such  as  are  inter-  ^ 
ested  in  the  art  of  letters,  and  in  those  who  prac- 
tise in  the  High  Court  of  Literature,  will  per-  ; 


PREFACE  9 

ceive  what  we  had  in  our  minds.  Here  is  life, 
not  a  story  or  a  constructed  diary,  and  the  art 
with  which  it  is  done  is  a  secondary  matter.  If 
Henry  Maitland  bleeds  and  howls,  so  did 
Philoctetes,  and  the  outcry  of  Henry  Maitland 
is  more  pertinent  to  our  lives.  For  all  life,  even 
at  its  best,  is  tragic;  and  there  is  much  in  Mait- 
land's  which  is  dramatically  common  to  our 
world  as  we  see  it  and  live  in  it.  If  we  have 
lessened  him  at  times  from  the  point  of  view  of 
a  hireling  in  biographic  praise,  we  have  set  him 
down  life  size  all  the  same;  and  as  we  ask  no 
praise,  we  care  for  no  blame.     Here  is  the  man. 

MoRLEY  Roberts. 

Note. — The  full  manuscript,  which  may  pos- 
sibly be  published  after  some  years,  is,  in  the 
meantime  placed  in  safe  custody. 


THE  PRIVATE  LIFE  OF 
HENRY  MAITLAND 


THE    PRIVATE    LIFE    OF 
HENRY   MAITLAND 

CHAPTER  I 

IT  is  never  an  easy  thing  to  write  the  life,  or 
even  such  a  sketch  as  I  propose  making,  of 
a  friend  v^hom  one  knew  well,  and  in 
Henry  Maitland's  case  it  is  most  uncommonly 
difficult.  The  usual  biographer  is  content  with 
writing  panegyric,  and  as  he  must  depend  for 
his  material,  and  even  sometimes  for  his  even- 
tual remuneration,  on  the  relatives  of  his  sub- 
ject, he  is  from  the  start  in  a  hopeless  position, 
except,  it  may  be,  as  regards  the  public  side  of 
the  life  in  question.  But  in  the  case  of  a  man 
of  letters  the  personal  element  is  the  only  real 
and  valuable  one,  or  so  it  seems  to  me,  and  even 
if  I  were  totally  ignorant  of  Maitland's  work  I 
think  it  would  yet  be  possible  for  me  to  do  a 
somewhat  lifelike  and  live  sketch  of  him.  I  be- 
lieve, moreover,  that  it  is  my  duty  to  do  it, 
although  no  doubt  in  some  ways  it  must  be  pain- 
ful to  those  connected  with  him.     Yet  soon  after 

13 


1*         :  iTEtE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

his  death  many  came  to  me  desiring  me  to  write 
his  biography.  It  was  an  understood  thing  that 
of  all  his  friends  I  knew  him  best,  and  was  cer- 
tainly the  greatest  and  chief  authority  on  his 
career  from  the  Moorhampton  College  days  up 
to  his  final  break  with  his  second  wife.  But  in 
1904  there  were  many  obstacles  to  my  doing  this 
work.  His  two  sons  were  young.  His  sisters 
and  his  mother  were  still  alive.  I  say  nothing 
of  the  wife  herself,  then  being  taken  care  of,  or 
of  a  third  lady  of  whom  I  must  speak  presently. 
Several  people  came  to  me  with  proposals  about 
a  book  on  Henry  Maitland.  One  of  the  part- 
ners of  a  big  publishing  house  made  me  a  defi- 
nite ofler  for  it  on  behalf  of  his  firm.  On  the 
other  hand  one  of  his  executors,  Miss  Kingdon, 
a  most  kindly  and  amiable  and  very  able  woman 
employed  in  a  great  accountant's  office  in  the 
city,  who  had  done  very  much  for  Henry  Mait- 
land in  his  later  life,  begged  me  not  to  do  the 
book,  or  if  I  did  it  to  hold  it  over  until  her  re- 
sponsibilities as  executrix  and  trustee  for  the 
sons  were  at  an  end.  But  it  is  now  nearly  nine 
years  since  he  died,  and  I  feel  that  if  I  do  not 
put  down  at  once  what  I  knew  of  him  it  never 
will  be  written,  and  something  will  be  lost, 
something  which  has  perhaps  a  little  value,  even 
though  it  is  not  so  great  as  those  could  wish  who 
knew  and  loved  Henry  Maitland. 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  15 

There  is  no  doubt  many  people  will  accuse  me 
of  desiring  to  use  his  memory  for  my  own  ad- 
vantage.    "My  withers  are  unwrung."     Those 
who  speak  in  this  way  must  have  little  knowl- 
edge of  the  poor  profit  to  be  derived  from  writ- 
ing such  a  book,   and  the  proportion  of  that 
profit  to  the  labour  employed  in  it.     On  three 
separate  occasions  I  spoke  to  Maitland  about 
writing  his  biography,  and  it  was  an  understood 
thing  between  us  that  if  he  died  before  me  I  was 
to  write  his  life  and  tell  the  whole  and  absolute 
truth  about  him.     This  he  gave  me  the  most 
definite  permission  to  do.     I  believe  he  felt  that 
it  might  in  some  ways  be  of  service  to  humanity 
for  such  a  book  to  be  written.     Only  the  other 
day,  when  I  wrote  to  Miss  Kingdon  concerning 
the  biography,  she  answered  me:     *'If  I  seem 
lacking  in  cordiality  in  this  matter  do  not  at- 
tribute it  to  any  want  of  sympathy  with  you.     I 
am    not    attempting   to    dissuade   you.     Henry 
Maitland  was  sent  into  hell  for  the  purpose  of 
saving  souls ;  perhaps  it  is  a  necessary  thing  that 
his  story  should  be  written  by  all  sorts  of  people 
from  their  different  points  of  view."     Once  I 
proposed  to  him  to  use  his  character  and  career 
as  the  chief  figure  in  a  long  story.     He  wrote  to 
me,  "By  all  means.     Why  not?"     Had  I  not  the 
letter  in  which  he  said  this  I  should  myself  al- 
most doubt  my  own  recollection,  but  it  is  certain 


16  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 


1 


that  he  knew  the  value  of  his  own  experience, 
and  felt  that  he  might  perhaps  by  his  example 
save  some  from  suffering  as  he  did. 

No  doubt  very  much  that  I  say  of  him  will 
not  be  true  to  others.  To  myself  it  is  true  at 
any  rate.  We  know  very  little  of  each  other, 
and  after  all  it  is  perhaps  in  biography  that  one 
is  most  acutely  conscious  of  the  truth  in  the 
pragmatic  view  of  truth.  Those  things  are  true 
in  Henry  Maitland's  life  and  character  which 
fit  in  wholly  with  all  my  experience  of  him  and 
make  a  coherent  and  likely  theory.  I  used  to 
think  I  knew  him  very  well,  and  yet  when  I 
remember  and  reflect  it  seems  to  me  that  I  know^ 
exceedingly  little  about  him.  And  yet  again,  I 
am  certain  that  of  the  two  people  in  the  world 
that  I  was  best  acquainted  with  he  was  one. 
We  go  through  life  believing  that  we  know 
many,  but  if  we  sit  down  and  attempt  to  draw 
them  we  find  here  and  there  unrelated  facts  and 
many  vague  incoherencies.  We  are  in  a  fog 
about  our  very  dear  friend  whom  but  yesterday 
we  were  ready  to  judge  and  criticise  with  an  air 
of  final  knowledge.  There  is  something  hu- 
miliating in  this,  and  yet  how  should  we,  who 
know  so  little  of  ourselves,  know  even  those  we 
love?  To  my  mind,  with  all  his  weaknesses, 
which  I  shall  not  extenuate,  Maitland  was  a 
noble  and  notable  character,  and  if  anything  I 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  17 

should  write  may  endure  but  a  little  while  it  is 
because  there  is  really  something  of  him  in  my 
words.  I  am  far  more  concerned  to  write  about 
Henry  Maitland  for  those  who  loved  him  than 
for  those  who  loved  him  not,  and  I  shall  be 
much  better  pleased  if  what  I  do  about  him 
takes  the  shape  of  an  impression  rather  than  of 
anything  like  an  ordinary  biography.  Every 
important  and  unimportant  political  fool  who 
dies  nowadays  is  buried  under  obituary  notices 
and  a  mausoleum  in  two  volumes — a  mausoleum 
which  is,  as  a  rule,  about  as  high  a  work  of  art 
as  the  angels  on  tombstones  in  an  early  Vic- 
torian cemetery.  But  Maitland,  I  think,  de- 
serves, if  not  a  better,  a  more  sympathetic 
tribute. 

When  I  left  Radford  Grammar  School  my 
father,  being  in  the  Civil  Service,  was  sent  to 
Moorhampton  as  Surveyor  of  Taxes,  and  his 
family  shortly  followed  him.  I  continued  my 
own  education  at  Moorhampton  College,  which 
was  then  beginning  to  earn  a  high  reputation  as 
an  educational  centre.  Some  months  before  I 
met  Maitland  personally  I  knew  his  reputation 
was  that  of  an  extraordinary  young  scholar. 
Even  as  a  boy  of  sixteen  he  swept  everything  be- 
fore him.  There  was  nobody  in  the  place  who 
could  touch  him  at  classical  learning,  and  every- 
body prophesied  the  very  greatest  future  for  the 


18  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

boy.  I  met  him  first  in  a  little  hotel  not  very 
far  from  the  College  where  some  of  us  young 
fellows  used  to  go  between  the  intervals  of  lec- 
tures to  play  a  game  of  billiards.  I  remember 
quite  well  seeing  him  sit  on  a  little  table  swing- 
ing his  legs,  and  to  this  day  I  can  remember 
somewhat  of  the  impression  he  made  upon  me. 
He  was  curiously  bright,  with  a  very  mobile 
face.  He  had  abundant  masses  of  brown  hair 
combed  backwards  over  his  head,  grey-blue 
eyes,  a  very  sympathetic  mouth,  an  extraor- 
dinarily well-shaped  chin — although  perhaps 
both  mouth  and  chin  were  a  little  weak — and  a 
great  capacity  for  talking  and  laughing. 

Henceforth  he  and  I  became  very  firm  friends 
at  the  College,  although  we  belonged  to  two  en- 
tirely different  sets.  I  was  supposed  to  be  an 
extraordinarily  rowdy  person,  and  was  always 
getting  into  trouble  both  with  the  authorities 
and  with  my  fellows,  and  he  was  a  man  who 
loathed  anything  like  rowdiness,  could  not  fight 
if  he  tried,  objected  even  then  to  the  Empire, 
hated  patriotism,  and  thought  about  nothing  but 
ancient  Greece  and  Rome,  or  so  it  would  appear 
to  those  who  knew  him  at  that  time. 

I  learnt  then  a  little  of  his  early  history. 
Even  when  he  was  but  a  boy  of  ten  or  eleven  he 
was  recognised  as  a  creature  of  most  brilliant 
promise.     He    always   believed   that   he   owed 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  19 

most,  and  perhaps  everything,  to  his  father,  who 
must  have  been  a  very  remarkable  man.  Henry 
never  spoke  about  him  in  later  life  without 
emotion  and  affection.  I  have  often  thought 
since  that  Maitland  felt  that  most  of  his  disasters 
sprang  from  the  premature  death  of  his  father, 
whom  he  loved  so  tenderly.  Indeed  the  elder 
man  must  have  been  a  remarkable  figure,  a  gen- 
tle, courtly,  and  most  kindly  man,  himself  born 
in  exile  and  placed  in  alien  circumstances. 
Maitland  often  used  to  speak,  with  a  catch  in 
his  voice,  of  the  way  his  father  read  to  him.  I 
remember  not  what  books,  but  they  were 
the  classic  authors  of  England;  Shakespeare, 
Wordsworth,  and  Tennyson.  Some  seem  to 
imagine  that  the  father  had  what  is  called  a 
well-stocked  library.  This  was  not  true,  but  he 
had  many  good  books  and  taught  his  son  to  love 
them.  Among  these  there  was  one  great  vol- 
ume of  Hogarth's  drawings  which  came  into 
Henry  Maitland's  personal  possession,  only,  I 
think,  when  he  was  finally  domiciled  in  a  Lon- 
don flat,  where  he  and  I  often  looked  at  it.  It 
is  curious  that  as  a  boy  Hogarth  had  a  fascina- 
tion for  him.  He  sometimes  copied  these  draw- 
ings, for  as  a  child  he  had  no  little  skill  as  a 
draughtsman.  What  appealed  to  him  in  later 
days  in  Hogarth  was  the  power  of  the  man's 
satire,  his  painful  bitterness,  which  can  only  be 


20  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

equalled  by  the  ironies  of  Swift  in  another  me- 
dium. Although  personally  I  admire  Hogarth 
I  could  never  look  at  him  with  anything  like 
pleasure  or,  indeed,  without  acute  discomfort. 
I  remember  that  Maitland  in  later  years  said  in 
his  book  about  the  Victorian  novelist:  ^With 
these  faces  who  would  spend  hours  of  leisure? 
Hogarth  copied  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word. 
He  gives  us  life  and  we  cannot  bear  it." 

Maitland's  family  came,  I  think,  from  Wor- 
cester, but  something  led  the  elder  Maitland  to 
Mirefield's,  and  there  he  came  in  contact  with 
a  chemist  called  Lake,  whose  business  he  pres- 
ently bought.  Perhaps  the  elder  Maitland  was 
not  a  wholly  happy  man.  He  was  very  gentle, 
but  not  a  person  of  marked  religious  feeling. 
Indeed  I  think  the  attitude  of  the  family  at  that 
time  was  that  of  free  thought.  From  every- 
thing that  Henry  said  of  his  father  it  always 
seemed  to  me  that  the  man  had  been  an  alien  in 
the  cold  Yorkshire  town  where  his  son  was  born. 
And  Maitland  knew  that  had  his  father  lived  he 
would  never  have  been  thrown  alone  into  the 
great  city  of  Moorhampton,  ''Lord  of  himself, 
that  heritage  of  woe."  Not  all  women  under- 
stand the  dangers  that  their  sons  may  meet  in 
such  surroundings,  and  those  who  had  charge 
of  Henry  Maitland's  future  never  understood 
or  recognized  them  in  his  youth.     But  his  father 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  21 

would  have  known.  In  one  chapter  of  *'The 
Vortex,"  there  is  very  much  of  Maitland.  It  is 
a  curiously  wrought  picture  of  a  father  and  his 
son  in  which  he  himself  played  alternately  the 
part  of  father  and  child.  I  knew  his  anxieties 
for  his  own  children,  and  on  reading  that  chap- 
ter one  sees  them  renewed.  But  in  it  there 
was  much  that  was  not  himself.  It  was  drawn 
rather  from  what  he  believed  his  father  had  felt. 
In  ^The  Vortex"  the  little  boy  spends  an  hour 
alone  with  his  father  just  before  bedtime,  and 
he  calls  it  ^^A  golden  hour,  sacred  to  memories 
of  the  world's  own  childhood." 

Maitland  went  to  school  in  Mirefields  and 
this  school  has  been  called  a  kind  of  ^'Dotheboys 
Hall,"  which  of  course  is  absolutely  ridiculous. 
It  was  not,  in  fact,  a  boarding-school  at  all,  but 
a  day  school.  The  man  who  ran  it  was  called 
Hinkson.  Maitland  said  he  was  an  uneducated 
man,  or  at  any  rate  uneducated  from  his  point 
of  view  in  later  years,  yet  he  was  a  person  of  very 
remarkable  character,  and  did  very  good  work, 
taking  it  all  round.  A  man  named  Christopher 
started  this  school  and  sold  it  to  Hinkson,  who 
had,  I  believe,  some  kind  of  a  degree  obtained 
at  Durham.  The  boys  who  attended  it  were 
good  middle  class  and  lower  middle  class,  some 
the  sons  of  professional  men,  some  the  offspring 
of  the  richer  tradesmen.     Upon  the  whole  it 


22  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

was  a  remarkably  good  school  for  that  time. 
Many  of  the  boys  actually  left  the  Grammar 
School  at  Mirefields  to  attend  it.  Henry  Mait- 
land  always  owned  that  Hinkson  took  great 
pains  with  his  scholars,  and  affirmed  that  many 
owed  him  much.  As  I  said,  the  general  re- 
ligious air  of  Maitland's  home  at  that  time  was 
one  of  free  thought.  I  believe  the  feminine 
members  of  the  family  attended  a  Unitarian 
Church,  but  the  father  did  not  go  to  church  at 
all.  One  example  of  this  religious  attitude  of 
his  home  came  out  when  Hinkson  called  on  his 
boys  to  repeat  the  collect  of  the  day  and  Mait- 
land  replied  with  an  abrupt  negative  that  they 
did  not  do  that  kind  of  thing  at  home.  Where- 
upon Hinkson  promptly  set  him  to  acquire  it, 
saying  sternly  that  it  would  do  him  no  harm. 

For  the  most  part  in  those  early  days  the  elder 
Maitland  and  his  son  spent  Sunday  afternoon  in 
the  garden  belonging  to  their  Mirefields  house. 
Oddly  enough  this  garden  was  not  attached  to 
the  dwelling  but  was  a  kind  of  allotment.  It 
has  been  photographically  reproduced  by 
Henry  Maitland  in  the  seventh  chapter  of  the 
first  volume  of  ^'Morning."  Very  often  Henry 
Maitland's  father  read  to  him  in  that  garden. 

One  of  Maitland's  schoolfellows  at  Hink- 
son's  school  was  the  son  of  the  man  from  whom 
his  father  had  bought  the  druggist's  business. 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  23 

The  elder  Lake  was  a  friend  of  Barry  Sullivan, 
and  theatrically  mad.  He  started  plays  in 
which  Henry  always  took  some  part,  though  not 
the  prominent  part  which  has  been  attributed  to 
him  by  some.  Nevertheless  he  was  always  in- 
terested in  plays  and  had  a  very  dramatic  way 
of  reading  anything  that  was  capable  of  dra- 
matic interpretation.  He  always  loved  the 
sound  of  words,  and  even  when  he  was  a  boy  of 
about  twelve  he  took  down  a  German  book  and 
read  some  of  it  aloud  to  the  younger  Lake,  who 
did  not  know  German  and  said  so.  Whereupon 
Maitland  shook  his  fist  at  him  and  said:  ''But 
Lake,  listen,  listen,  listen — doesn't  it  sound 
fine?"  This  endured  through  all  his  life.  At 
this  same  time  he  used  to  read  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  aloud  to  some  of  the  other  boys.  This 
was  when  he  was  thirteen.  Even  then  he 
always  mouthed  the  words  and  loved  their 
rhythm. 

Naturally  enough,  his  father  being  a  poor 
man,  there  would  have  been  no  opportunity  of 
Henry  Maitland's  going  to  Moorhampton  and 
to  its  great  college  if  he  had  not  obtained  some 
scholarship.  This,  I  think,  was  the  notion  that 
his  father  had  at  the  time,  and  the  necessity  for 
it  became  more  imperative  when  his  father  died. 
He  did  obtain  this  scholarship  when  he  was 
somewhere    about    sixteen,     and    immediately 


24.  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

afterwards  was  sent  over  to  Moorhampton  quite 
alone  and  put  into  lodgings  there.  At  his 
school  in  Mirefields  he  had  taken  every  possible 
prize,  and  I  think  it  was  two  exhibitions  from 
the  London  University  which  enabled  him  to  go 
to  Moorhampton.  The  college  was  a  curious 
institution,  one  of  the  earliest  endeavours  to  cre- 
ate a  kind  of  university  centre  in  a  great  pro- 
vincial city.  We  certainly  had  a  very  wonder- 
ful staff  there,  especially  on  the  scientific  side. 
Among  the  men  of  science  at  the  college  were 
Sir  Henry  Bissell;  Schorstein,  the  great  chem- 
ist; Hahn,  also  a  chemist,  and  Balfour,  the 
physicist.  On  the  classical  side  were  Professor 
Little  and  Professor  Henry  Parker,  who  were 
not  by  any  means  so  eminent  as  their  scientific 
colleagues.  The  eminence  of  our  scientific  pro- 
fessors did  not  matter  very  much  from  Henry 
Maitland's  point  of  view,  perhaps,  for  from  the 
day  of  his  birth  to  the  day  of  his  death,  he  took 
no  interest  whatever  in  science  and  loathed  all 
forms  of  speculative  thought  with  a  peculiar 
and  almost  amusing  horror.  Mathematics  he 
detested,  and  if  in  later  years  I  ever  attempted 
to  touch  upon  metaphysical  questions  he  used  to 
shut  up,  to  use  an  American  phrase,  just  like  a 
clam.  But  on  the  classical  side  he  was  much 
more  than  merely  successful.  He  took  every 
possible  prize  that  was  open  to  him.     In  his 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  25 

book  "The  Exile,"  there  is  a  picture  of  a  youth 
on  prize  day  going  up  to  receive  prize  after 
prize,  and  I  know  that  this  chapter  contains 
much  of  what  he  himself  must  have  felt  when  I 
saw  him  retire  to  a  modest  back  bench  loaded 
with  books  bound  in  calf  and  tooled  in  gold. 

Of  course  a  college  of  this  description,  which 
was  not,  properly  speaking,  a  university,  could 
only  be  regarded,  for  a  boy  of  his  culture,  as  a 
stepping-stone  to  one  of  the  older  universities, 
probably  Cambridge,  since  most  of  my  own 
friends  who  did  go  to  the  university  went  there 
from  Moorhampton.  I  do  not  think  there  was 
a  professor  or  lecturer  or  a  single  student  in  the 
college  who  did  not  anticipate  for  Henry  Mait- 
land  one  of  the  brightest  possible  futures,  so 
far  as  success  at  the  university  could  make  it  so. 
It  is  possible  that  I  alone  out  of  those  who  re- 
garded him  with  admiration  and  affection  had 
some  doubt  of  this,  and  that  was  not  because  I 
disagreed  as  a  boy  with  any  of  the  estimates  that 
had  been  formed  of  him,  but  simply  because  for 
some  reason  or  another  he  chose  me  as  a  confi- 
dant. Many  years  afterwards  he  said  to  me 
with  painful  bitterness:  "It  was  a  cruel  and 
most  undesirable  thing  that  I,  at  the  age  of  six- 
teen, should  have  been  turned  loose  in  a  big  city, 
compelled  to  live  alone  in  lodgings,  with  no- 
body interested  in  me  but  those  at  the  college. 


26  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

I  see  now  that  one  of  my  sisters  should  certainly 
have  been  sent  with  me  to  Moorhampton." 

One  day  he  showed  me  a  photograph.  It  was 
that  of  a  young  girl,  aged  perhaps  seventeen — 
he  at  the  time  being  very  little  more — with  her 
hair  down  her  back.  She  was  not  beautiful,  but 
she  had  a  certain  prettiness,  the  mere  prettiness 
of  youth,  and  she  was  undoubtedly  not  a  lady. 
After  some  interrogation  on  my  part  he  told  me 
that  she  was  a  young  prostitute  whom  he  knew, 
and  I  do  not  think  I  am  exaggerating  my  own 
feelings  when  I  say  that  I  recognised  instinc- 
tively and  at  once  that  if  his  relations  with  her 
were  not  put  an  end  to  some  kind  of  disaster  was 
in  front  of  him.  It  was  not  that  I  knew  very 
much  about  life,  for  what  could  a  boy  of  less 
than  eighteen  really  know  about  it? — but  I  had 
some  kind  of  instinctive  sense  in  me,  and  I  was 
perfectly  aware,  even  then,  that  Henry  Mait- 
land  had  about  as  little  savoir-vivre  as  anybody 
I  had  ever  met  up  to  that  time,  or  anybody  I 
could  ever  expect  to  meet.  It  may  seem  strange 
to  some  that  even  at  that  time  I  had  no  moral 
views,  and  extremely  little  religion,  although  I 
may  say  incidentally  that  I  thought  about  it  suf- 
ficiently to  become  deliberately  a  Unitarian,  re- 
fusing to  be  confirmed  in  the  English  Church, 
very  much  to  the  rage  of  the  parish  clergyman, 
and  with  the  result  of  much  friction  with  my 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  27 

father.  Yet  although  I  had  no  moral  views  I 
did  my  best  to  get  Maitland  to  give  up  this  girl, 
but  he  would  not  do  it.  The  thing  went  on,  so 
far  as  I  am  aware,  for  the  best  part  of  a  year. 
He  did  all  he  could,  apparently,  to  get  Marian 
Hilton  to  leave  the  streets.  He  even  bought  a 
sewing  machine  and  gave  it  to  her  with  this 
view.  That  was  another  sample  of  his  early 
idealism. 

This  was  in  1876,  and  the  younger  Lake,  who 
was  three  years  older  than  Maitland,  had  by 
then  just  qualified  as  a  doctor.  He  was  an  as- 
sistant at  Darwen  and  one  day  went  over  to 
Moorhampton  to  see  Henry,  who  told  him  what 
he  had  told  me  about  this  Marian  Hilton.  He 
even  went  so  far  as  to  say  that  he  was  going  to 
marry  her.  Dr.  Lake,  of  course,  being  an  older 
man,  and  knowing  something  of  life  through  his 
own  profession,  did  not  approve  of  this  and 
strongly  objected.  Afterwards  he  regretted  a 
thousand  times  that  he  had  not  written  direct  to 
Maitland's  people  to  tell  them  of  what  was  go- 
ing on.  Still,  although  he  was  the  older  man, 
'he  was  not  so  much  older  as  to  have  got  rid  of 
the  boyish  loyalty  of  one  youth  to  another,  and 
he  did  not  do  what  he  knew  he  ought  to  have 
done.  He  found  out  that  Maitland  had  even 
sold  his  father's  watch  to  help  this  girl.  This 
affair  was  also  known  to  a  young  accountant  who 


28  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

came  from  Mirefields  whom  I  did  not  know, 
and  also  to  another  man  at  the  college  who  is 
now  in  the  Government  Service.  So  far  as  I 
remember  the  accountant  was  not  a  good  influ- 
ence, but  his  other  friend  did  what  he  could  to 
get  Maitland  to  break  off  this  very  undesirable 
relationship,  with  no  more  success  than  myself. 
I  have  never  understood  how  it  was  that  he 
got  into  such  frightful  financial  difficulties.  I 
can  only  imagine  that  Marian  must  have  had,  in 
one  way  or  another,  the  greater  portion  of  the 
income  which  he  got  from  the  scholarships  he 
held.  I  do  know  that  his  affection  for  her 
seemed  at  this  time  to  be  very  sincere.  And  out 
of  that  affection  there  grew  up,  very  naturally, 
a  horror  in  his  sensitive  mind  for  the  life  this 
poor  child  was  leading.  He  haunted  the  streets 
which  she  haunted,  and  sometimes  saw  her  with 
other  men.  I  suppose  even  then  she  must  have 
been  frightfully  extravagant,  and  perhaps  given 
to  drink,  but  considering  what  his  income  was  I 
think  he  should  have  been  able  to  give  her  a 
pound  a  week  if  necessary,  and  yet  have  had  suf- 
ficient to  live  on  without  great  difficulty. 
Nevertheless  he  did  get  into  difficulties,  and 
never  even  spoke  to  me  about  it.  I  was  quite 
aware,  in  a  kind  of  dim  way,  that  he  was  in 
trouble  and  looked  very  ill,  but  he  did  not  give 
me  his  fullest  confidence,  although  one  day  he 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  29 

told  me,  as  he  had  told  Lake,  that  he  proposed 
marrying  her.  I  was  only  a  boy,  but  I  was  ab- 
solutely enraged  at  the  notion  and  used  every 
possible  means  to  prevent  him  committing  such 
an  absurd  act  of  folly.  When  I  met  him  I  dis- 
cussed it  with  hirn.  When  I  was  away  from 
him  I  wrote  him  letters.  I  suppose  I  wrote  him 
a  dozen  letters  begging  that  he  would  do  no  such 
foolish  thing.  I  told  him  that  he  would  wrong 
himself,  and  could  do  the  girl  no  possible  good. 
My  instincts  told  me  even  then  that  she  would, 
instead  of  being  raised,  pull  him  down.  These 
letters  of  mine  were  afterwards  discovered  in 
his  rooms  when  the  tragedy  had  happened. 

During  that  time  in  1876,  we  students  at 
Moorhampton  College  were  much  disturbed  by 
a  series  of  thefts  in  the  common  room,  and  from 
a  locker  room  in  which  we  kept  our  books  and 
papers  and  our  overcoats.  Books  disappeared 
unaccountably  and  so  did  coats.  Money  was 
taken  from  the  pockets  of  coats  left  in  the  room, 
and  nobody  knew  who  was  to  blame  for  this. 
Naturally  enough  we  suspected  a  porter  or  one 
of  the  lower  staff,  but  we  were  wrong.  With- 
out our  knowledge  the  college  authorities  set  a 
detective  to  discover  who  was  to  blame.  One 
day  I  went  into  the  common  room,  and  standing 
in  front  of  the  fire  found  a  man,  a  young  fellow 
about    my    age,    called    Sarle,    with    whom    I 


30  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

frequently  played  chess — he  was  afterwards 
president  of  the  chess  club  at  Oxford — and  he 
said  to  me:  ''Have  you  heard  the  news?" 
''What  news?"  I  asked.  "Your  friend,  Henry 
Maitland,  has  been  stealing  those  things  that  we 
have  lost,"  he  said.  And  when  he  said  it  I  very 
nearly  struck  him,  for  it  seemed  a  gross  and  in- 
credible slander.  But  unfortunately  it  was 
true,  and  at  that  very  moment  Maitland  was  in 
gaol.  A  detective  had  hidden  himself  in  the 
small  room  leading  out  of  the  bigger  room 
where  the  lockers  were  and  had  caught  him  in 
the  act.  It  was  a  very  ghastly  business  and  cer- 
tainly the  first  great  shock  I  ever  got  in  my  life. 
I  think  it  was  the  same  for  everybody  who  knew 
the  boy.  The  whole  college  was  in  a  most  ex- 
traordinary ferment,  and,  indeed,  I  may  say  the 
whole  of  Moorhampton  which  took  any  real  in- 
terest in  the  college. 

Professor  Little,  who  was  then  the  head  of  the 
college,  sent  for  me  and  asked  me  what  I  knew 
of  the  matter.  I  soon  discovered  that  this  was 
because  the  police  had  found  letters  from  me  in 
Maitland's  room  which  referred  to  Marian  Hil- 
ton. I  told  the  professor  with  the  utmost  frank- 
ness everything  that  I  knew  about  the  affair,  and 
maintained  that  I  had  done  my  utmost  to  get 
him  to  break  with  her,  a  statement  which  all  my 
letters  supported.     I  have  often  imagined  a  cer- 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  31 

tain  suspicion,  in  the  minds  of  some  of  those  who 
are  given  to  suspicion,  that  I  myself  had  been 
leading  the  same  kind  of  life  as  Henry  Mait- 
land.  This  was  certainly  not  true;  but  I  be- 
lieve that  one  or  two  of  those  who  did  not  like 
me — and  there  are  always  some — threw  out 
hints  that  I  knew  Maitland  had  been  taking 
these  things.  Yet  after  my  very  painful  inter- 
view with  Professor  Little,  who  was  a  very  de- 
lightful and  kindly  personality — though  cer- 
tainly not  so  strong  a  man  as  the  head  of  such  an 
institution  should  be — I  saw  that  he  gave  me 
every  credit  for  what  I  had  tried  to  do.  Among 
my  own  friends  at  the  college  was  a  young  fel- 
low, Edward  Wolff,  the  son  of  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Wolff,  the  Unitarian  minister  at  the  chapel  in 
Broad  Street.  Edward  was  afterwards  fifth 
wrangler  of  his  year  at  Cambridge.  He  got  his 
father  to  interest  himself  in  Henry  Maitland's 
future.  Mr.  Wolff  and  several  other  men  of 
some  eminence  in  the  city  did  what  they  could 
for  him.  They  got  together  a  little  money  and 
on  his  release  from  prison  sent  him  away  to 
America.  He  was  met  on  coming  out  of  prison 
by  Dr.  Lake's  father,  who  also  helped  him  in 
every  possible  way. 

It  seemed  to  me  then  that  I  had  probably  seen 
the  last  of  Maitland,  and  the  turn  my  own  career 
took  shortly  afterwards  rendered  this  even  more 


32  HENRY  MAITLAND 

likely.  In  the  middle  of  1876  I  had  a  very  seri- 
ous disagreement  with  my  father,  who  was  a 
man  of  great  ability  but  very  violent  temper, 
and  left  home.  On  September  23  of  that  year  I 
sailed  for  Australia  and  remained  there,  work- 
ing mostly  in  the  bush,  for  the  best  part  of  three 
years.  During  all  that  time  I  heard  little  of 
Henry  Maitland,  though  I  have  some  dim  re- 
membrance of  a  letter  I  received  from  him  tell- 
ing me  that  he  was  in  America.  It  was  in  1879 
that  I  shipped  before  the  mast  at  Melbourne  in 
a  blackwall  barque  and  came  back  to  England 
as  a  seaman. 


CHAPTER  II 

A  PSYCHOLOGIST  or  a  romancer  might 
comment  on  the  matter  of  the  last  chap- 
ter till  the  sun  went  down,  but  the 
world  perhaps  would  not  be  much  further  ad- 
vanced. It  is  better,  I  think,  for  the  man's 
apology  or  condemnation  to  come  out  of  the 
drama  that  followed.  This  is  where  Life  mocks 
at  Art.  The  tragic  climax  and  catastrophe  are 
in  the  first  act,  and  the  remainder  is  a  long  and 
bitter  commentary.  Maitland  and  I  never  dis- 
cussed his  early  life.  Practically  we  never 
spoke  of  Moorhampton  though  we  often  enough 
touched  on  ancient  things  by  implication.  His 
whole  life  as  I  saw  it,  and  as  I  shall  relate  it,  is 
but  a  development  of  the  nature  which  made  his 
disaster  possible. 

So  one  comes  back  to  my  own  return  from 
Australia.  I  had  gone  out  there  as  a  boy,  and 
came  back  a  man,  for  I  had  had  a  man's  experi- 
ences; work,  adventure,  travel,  hunger,  and 
thirst.  All  this  hardened  a  somewhat  neurotic 
temperament,  at  any  rate  for  the  time,  till  life 
in  a  city,  and  the  humaner  world  of  books  re- 


34  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

moved  the  temper  which  one  gets  when  plunged 
in  the  baths  of  the  ocean.  During  some  months 
I  worked  for  a  position  in  the  Civil  Service  and 
thought  very  little  of  Maitland,  for  he  was  lost. 
Yet  as  I  got  back  into  the  classics  he  returned  to 
me  at  times,  and  I  wrote  to  my  own  friends  in 
Moorhampton  about  him.  They  sent  me  vague 
reports  of  him  in  the  United  States,  and  then  at 
last  there  came  word  that  he  was  once  more  in 
England;  possibly,  and  even  probably,  in  Lon- 
don. Soon  afterwards  I  found  an  advertise- 
ment in  the  Athenceum  of  a  book  entitled  ''Chil- 
dren of  the  Dawn,"  by  Henry  Maitland.  As 
soon  as  I  saw  it  I  went  straightway  to  the  firm 
which  published  it,  and  being  ignorant  of  the 
ways  of  publishers,  demanded  Maitland's  ad- 
dress, which  was  promptly  and  very  properly 
refused — for  all  they  knew  I  might  have  been  a 
creditor.  They  promised,  however,  to  send  on 
a  letter  to  him,  and  I  wrote  one  at  once,  receiv- 
ing an  answer  the  very  next  day.  He  appointed 
as  our  meeting-place  the  smoking-room  of  the 
Horse  Shoe  Hotel  at  the  bottom  of  Tottenham 
Court  Road.  Conceivably  it  was  one  of  the 
most  curious  meetings  that  had  ever  taken  place 
in  such  a  locality.  We  met  late  at  night  in  the 
crowded  smoking-room,  and  I  found  him  very 
much  his  old  self,  for  he  was  still  a  handsome 
and  intelligent  boy,  though  somewhat  worn  and 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  35 

haggard  considering  his  years.  As  for  myself, 
I  remember  that  he  told  me,  chuckling,  that  I 
looked  like  a  soldier,  which  was  no  doubt  the 
result  of  some  years  on  horseback — possibly  I 
walked  with  a  cavalry  stride.  We  sat  and 
drank  coffee,  and  had  whiskey,  and  smoked,  un- 
til we  were  turned  out  of  the  hotel  at  half-past 
twelve.  It  was  perhaps  owing  to  the  fact  that  I 
was  ever  the  greater  talker  that  he  learnt  more 
of  my  life  in  Australia  than  I  learnt  of  his  in  the 
United  States.  He  was,  in  fact,  somewhat  re- 
served as  to  his  adventures  there.  And  yet,  lit- 
tle by  little,  I  learnt  a  great  deal — it  was  always 
a  case  of  little  by  little  with  him.  At  no  time 
did  he  possess  any  great  fluency  or  power  of 
words  when  speaking  of  his  own  life. 

It  seems  that  friends  had  given  him  some  let- 
ters to  writers  and  others  in  New  York,  and  he 
made  the  acquaintance  there  of  many  whose 
names  I  forget.  I  only  recollect  the  name  of 
Lloyd  Garrison,  the  poet.  Maitland  told  me 
that  upon  one  occasion  Lloyd  Garrison  induced 
him  to  go  home  with  him  about  two  o'clock  in 
the  morning  to  hear  a  sonnet  on  which  Garrison 
had  been  working,  as  he  affirmed  almost  with 
tears,  for  three  whole  months.  As  Maitland 
said,  the  result  hardly  justified  the  toil.  Among 
the  friends  that  he  made  there  were  a  few  artis- 
tic and  literary  tendencies  who  had  made  a  little 


36  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

club,  where  it  was  de  rigueur  at  certain  times  to 
produce  something  in  the  form  of  a  poem. 
Maitland  showed  me  the  set  of  verses  with 
which  he  had  paid  his  literary  footing;  they 
were  amusing,  but  of  no  great  importance.  So 
long  as  Maitland's  money  lasted  in  New  York 
he  had  not  an  unpleasant  time.  It  was  only 
when  he  exhausted  his  means  and  had  to  earn  a 
living  by  using  his  wits  that  he  found  himself 
in  great  difficulties,  w^hich  were  certainly  not  to 
be  mitigated  by  the  production  of  verse.  But 
Maitland  never  pretended  to  wTite  poetry, 
though  he  sometimes  tried.  I  still  have  a  few 
of  his  poems  in  my  possession,  one  of  them  a  set 
of  love  verses  which  he  put  into  one  of  his  books 
but  omitted  on  my  most  fervent  recommenda- 
tion. I  believe,  however,  that  there  is  still  much 
verse  by  him  in  existence,  if  he  did  not  destroy 
it  in  later  years  when  circumstances,  his  wan- 
derings and  his  poverty,  made  it  inconvenient 
to  preserve  comparatively  worthless  papers. 
And  yet,  if  he  did  not  destroy  it,  it  might  now 
be  of  no  small  interest  to  men  of  letters. 

When  his  means  were  almost  exhausted  he 
went  to  Boston,  and  from  there  drifted  to  Chi- 
cago. With  a  very  few  comments  and  altera- 
tions, the  account  given  in  'Taternoster  Row," 
contains  the  essence  of  Maitland's  own  adven- 
tures in  America.     It  is,  of  course,  written  in  a 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  37 

very  light  style,  and  is  more  or  less  tinged  with 
humour.  This  humour,  however,  is  purely  lit- 
erary, for  he  felt  very  little  of  it  when  he  was 
telling  me  the  story.  He  certainly  lived  during 
two  days,  for  instance,  upon  peanuts,  and  he  did 
it  in  a  town  called  Troy.  I  never  gathered 
what  actually  drove  him  to  Chicago :  it  was,  per- 
haps, the  general  idea  that  one  gets  in  America 
that  if  one  goes  west  one  goes  to  the  land  of 
chances,  but  it  certainly  was  not  the  land  for 
Henry  Maitland.  Nevertheless,  as  he  relates 
in  ^Taternoster  Row,"  he  reached  it  with  less 
than  five  dollars  in  his  pocket,  and  with  a  cour- 
age which  he  himself  marvelled  at,  paid  four 
and  a  half  dollars  for  a  week's  board  and  lodg- 
ing, which  made,  him  secure  for  the  moment. 
This  boarding-house  he  once  or  twice  described 
to  me.  It  was  an  unclean  place  somewheje  on 
Wabash  Avenue,  and  was  occupied  very  largely 
by  small  actors  and  hangers-on  at  the  Chicago 
theatres.  The  food  was  poor,  the  service  was 
w^orse,  and  there  was  only  one  common  room,  in 
which  they  ate  and  lived.  It  was  at  this  time, 
when  he  had  taken  a  look  round  Chicago  and 
found  it  very  like  Hell  or  Glasgow,  which,  in- 
deed, it  is,  that  he  determined  to  attack  the  edi- 
tor of  the  Chicago  Tribune.  The  description 
he  gives  of  this  scene  in  'Taternoster  Row"  is 
not  wholly  accurate.     I  remember  he  said  that 


38  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

he  walked  to  and  fro  for  hours  outside  the  offices 
of  the  paper  before  he  took  what  remained  of 
his  courage  in  both  hands,  rushed  into  the  ele- 
vator, and  was  carried  to  an  upper  story.  He 
asked  for  work,  and  the  accessible  and  genial 
editor  demanded,  in  return,  what  experience  he 
had  had  with  journalism.  He  said,  with  des- 
perate boldness,  ^'None  whatever,"  and  the  edi- 
tor, not  at  all  unkindly,  asked  him  what  he 
thought  he  could  do  for  them.  He  replied, 
^'There  is  one  thing  that  is  wanting  in  your 
paper."  'What  is  that?"  asked  the  editor. 
'Tiction,"  said  Maitland,  ''I  should  like  to 
write  you  some."  The  editor  considered  the 
matter,  and  said  that  he  had  no  objection  to  using 
a  story  provided  it  was  good;  it  would  serve  for 
one  of  the  weekly  supplements,  because  these 
American  papers  at  the  end  of  the  week  have 
amazing  supplements,  full  of  all  sorts  of  con- 
ceivable matter.  Maitland  asked  if  he  might 
try  him  with  a  story  of  English  life,  and  got  per- 
mission to  do  so. 

He  went  away  and  walked  up  and  down  the 
lake  shore  for  hours  in  the  bitter  wind,  trying  to 
think  out  a  story,  and  at  last  discovered  one.  On 
his  way  home  he  bought  a  pen,  ink,  and  paper, 
which  they  did  not  supply  at  the  boarding-house. 
As  it  was  impossible  to  write  in  his  bedroom, 
where  there  was,  of  course,  no  fire,  and  no  proper 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  39 

heating,  it  being  so  poor  a  place,  he  was  com- 
pelled to  write  on  the  table  of  the  common  room 
with  a  dozen  other  men  there,  talking,  smoking, 
and  no  doubt  quarrelling.  He  wrote  this  story 
in  a  couple  of  days,  and  it  was  long  enough  to 
fill  several  columns  of  the  paper.  To  his  in- 
tense relief  it  was  accepted  by  the  editor  after 
a  day  or  two's  waiting,  and  he  got  eighteen  dol- 
lars according  to  ''Paternoster  Row,"  though  I 
believe  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  was  less  in  reality. 
He  stayed  for  some  time  in  Chicago  working 
for  the  Tribune,  but  at  last  found  that  he  could 
write  no  more.  I  believe  the  editor  himself  sug- 
gested that  the  stories  were  perhaps  not  quite 
what  he  wanted.  The  one  that  I  saw  I  only  re- 
member vaguely.  It  was,  however,  a  sort  of 
psychological  love-story  placed  in  London,  writ- 
ten without  much  distinction. 

The  account  Broughton  gives  in  "Paternoster 
Row"  of  his  visit  to  Troy  is  fairly  representative 
of  Maitland's  experiences.  It  was  there  that  he 
lived  for  two  or  three  days  on  peanuts,  buying 
five  cents'  worth  in  the  street  now  and  then  at 
some  Italian  peanut  stand.  In  ''Paternoster 
Row"  he  calls  them  loathsome,  and  no  doubt 
they  soon  do  become  loathsome.  A  few  are 
rather  pleasing,  more  than  a  few  are  objection- 
able ;  and  when  anybody  tries  a  whole  diet  of 
them  for  a  day  or  two  there  is  no  doubt  "loath- 


40  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

some"  would  be  the  proper  word.  After  that 
he  worked  for  a  photographer  for  a  few  days, 
and  then,  I  think,  for  a  plumber,  but  of  this  I 
remember  very  little.  It  is  quite  certain  that 
he  never  earned  enough  money  in  America  to 
enable  him  to  return  to  England,  but  who  lent 
it  to  him  I  have  no  idea.  To  have  been  twenty- 
four  hours  with  no  more  than  a  handful  of  pea- 
nuts in  his  pocket  was  no  doubt  an  unpleasant 
experience,  but,  as  I  told  him,  it  seemed  very 
little  to  me.  On  one  occasion  in  Australia  I 
had  been  rather  more  than  four  and  a  half  days 
without  food  when  caught  in  a  flood.  Never- 
theless this  starvation  was  for  him  one  of  the 
initiation  ceremonies  into  the  mysteries  of  liter- 
ature, and  he  was  always  accustomed  to  say, 
''How  can  such  an  one  write?  He  never 
starved." 

Nevertheless  to  have  been  hard  up  in  Chicago 
was  a  very  great  experience,  as  every  one  knows 
who  knows  that  desperate  city  of  the  plains. 
Since  that  time  I  myself  have  known  Chicago 
well,  and  have  been  there  "dead  broke."  Thus 
I  can  imagine  the  state  that  he  must  have  been 
in,  and  how  desperate  he  must  have  become,  to 
get  out  of  his  difficulties  in  the  way  that  he  actu- 
ally employed.  The  endeavour  to  obtain  work 
in  a  hustling  country  like  the  United  States  is 
ever  a  desperate  proceeding  for  a  nervous  and 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  41 

sensitive  man,  and  what  it  must  have  been  to 
Henry  Maitland  to  do  what  he  did  with  the 
editor  of  the  Chicago  Tribune  can  only  be  im- 
agined by  those  who  knew  him.  In  many  ways 
he  was  the  most  modest  and  the  shyest  man  who 
ever  lived,  and  yet  he  actually  told  this  editor: 
'^I  have  come  to  point  out  to  you  there  is  a  se- 
rious lack  in  your  paper."  To  those  who  knew 
Maitland  this  must  seem  as  surprising  as  it  did 
to  myself,  and  in  later  years  he  sometimes 
thought  of  that  incident  with  inexpressible  joy  in 
his  own  courage.  Of  course  the  oddest  thing 
about  the  whole  affair  is  that  up  to  that  moment 
he  had  never  written  fiction  at  all,  and  only 
did  it  because  he  was  driven  to  desperation.  As 
will  be  seen  when  I  come  later  to  discuss  his 
qualifications  as  a  writer  this  is  a  curious  com- 
ment on  much  of  his  bigger  work.  To  me  it 
seems  that  he  should  never  have  written  fiction 
at  all,  although  he  did  it  so  admirably.  I  think 
it  would  be  very  interesting  if  some  American 
student  of  Maitland  would  turn  over  the  files 
of  the  Tribune  in  the  years  1878  and  1879  and 
disinter  the  work  he  did  there.  This  is  prac- 
tically all  I  ever  learnt  about  his  life  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  I  was,  indeed,  more 
anxious  to  discover  how  he  lived  in  London, 
and  in  what  circumstances.  I  asked  him  as  deli- 
cately as  possible  about  his  domestic  circum- 


42  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

stances,  and  he  then  told  me  that  he  was  mar- 
ried, and  that  his  wife  was  with  him  in  London. 
It  is  very  curious  to  think  that  I  never  actually 
met  his  first  wife.  I  had,  of  course,  seen  her 
photograph,  and  I  have  on  several  occasions 
been  in  the  next  room  to  her.  On  those  occasions 
she  was  usually  unable  to  be  seen,  mostly  because 
she  was  intoxicated.  When  we  renewed  our  ac- 
quaintance in  the  Horse  Shoe  Tavern  he  was 
then  living  in  mean  apartments  in  one  of  the 
back  streets  off  Tottenham  Court  Road  not  very 
far  from  the  hotel  and  indeed  not  far  from  a 
cellar  that  he  once  occupied  in  a  neighbouring 
street.  Little  by  little  as  I  met  him  again  and 
again  I  began  to  get  some  hold  upon  his  actual 
life.  Gradually  he  became  more  confidential, 
and  I  gathered  from  him  that  the  habits  of  his 
wife  were  perpetually  compelling  him  to  move 
from  one  house  to  another.  From  what  he  told 
me,  sometimes  hopefully,  and  more  often  in  des- 
peration, it  seems  that  this  poor  creature  made 
vain  and  violent  efforts  to  reform,  gener- 
ally after  some  long  debauch.  And  of  this  I 
am  very  sure,  that  no  man  on  earth  could  have 
made  more  desperate  efforts  to  help  her  than  he 
made.  But  the  actual  fact  remains  that  they 
were  turned  out  of  one  lodging  after  the  other, 
for  even  the  poorest  places,  it  seems,  could 
hardly  stand  a  woman  of  her  character  in  the 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  43 

house.  I  fear  it  was  not  only  that  she  drank, 
but  at  intervals  she  deserted  him  and  went  back, 
for  the  sake  of  more  drink,  and  for  the  sake  of 
money  with  which  he  was  unable  to  supply  her, 
to  her  old  melancholy  trade.  And  yet  she  re- 
turned again  with  tears,  and  he  took  her  in,  do- 
ing his  best  for  her.  It  was  six  months  after  our 
first  meeting  in  Tottenham  Court  Road  that  he 
asked  me  to  go  and  spend  an  evening  with  him. 
Naturally  enough  I  then  expected  to  make 
Mrs.  Maitland's  acquaintance,  but  on  my  ar- 
rival he  showed  some  disturbance  of  mind  and 
told  me  that  she  was  ill  and  would  be  unable 
to  see  me.  The  house  they  lived  in  then  was 
not  very  far  from  Mornington  Crescent.  It 
was  certainly  in  some  dull  neighbourhood  not 
half  a  mile  away.  The  street  was,  I  think,  a 
cul-de-sac.  It  was  full  of  children  of  the  lower 
orders  playing  in  the  roadway.  Their  fathers 
and  mothers,  it  being  Saturday  night,  sat  upon 
the  doorsteps,  or  quarrelled,  or  talked  in  the 
road.  The  front  room  in  which  he  received 
me  was  both  mean  and  dirty.  The  servant  who 
took  me  upstairs  was  a  poor  foul  slut,  and  I  do 
not  think  the  room  had  been  properly  cleaned 
or  dusted  for  a  very  long  time.  The  whole  of 
the  furniture  in  it  was  certainly  not  worth  seven 
and  sixpence  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  or- 
dinary furniture  dealer.     There  were  signs  in 


44  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

it  that  it  had  been  occupied  by  a  woman,  and 
one  without  the  common  elements  of  decency 
and  cleanliness.  Under  a  miserable  and  broken 
sofa  lay  a  pair  of  dirty  feminine  boots.  And 
yet  on  one  set  of  poor  shelves  there  were,  still 
shining  with  gold,  the  prizes  Maitland  had  won 
at  Moorhampton  College,  and  his  painfully  ac- 
quired stock  of  books  that  he  loved  so  much. 

As  I  came  in  by  arrangement  after  my  own 
dinner,  we  simply  sat  and  smoked  and  drank  a 
little  whiskey.  Twice  in  the  course  of  an  hour 
our  conversation  was  interrupted  by  the  servant 
knocking  at  the  door  and  beckoning  to  Mait- 
land to  come  out.  In  the  next  room  I  then 
heard  voices,  sometimes  raised,  sometimes  plead- 
ing. When  Maitland  returned  the  first  time  he 
said  to  me,  ''I  am  very  sorry  to  have  to  leave 
you  for  a  few  minutes.  My  wife  is  really  un- 
well." But  I  knew  by  now  the  disease  from 
which  she  suffered.  Twice  or  thrice  I  was 
within  an  ace  of  getting  up  and  saying,  ''Don't 
you  think  I'd  better  go,  old  chap?"  And  then 
he  was  called  out  again.  He  came  back  at  last 
in  a  state  of  obvious  misery  and  perturbation, 
and  said,  "My  dear  man,  my  wife  is  so  ill  that 
I  think  I  must  ask  you  to  go."  I  shook  hands 
with  him  in  silence  and  went,  for  I  understood. 
A  little  afterwards  he  told  me  that  that  very 
afternoon  his  wife  had  gone  out,  and  obtaining 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  45 

drink  in  some  way  had  brought  it  home  with 
her,  and  that  she  was  then  almost  insane  with 
alcohol.  This  was  the  kind  of  life  that  Henry 
Maitland,  perhaps  a  great  man  of  letters,  lived 
for  years.  Comfortable  people  talk  of  his  pes- 
simism, and  his  greyness  of  outlook,  and  never 
understand.  The  man  really  was  a  hedonist,  he 
loved  things  beautiful — beautiful  and  orderly. 
He  rejoiced  in  every  form  of  Art,  in  books  and 
music,  and  in  all  the  finer  inheritance  of  the  past. 
But  this  was  the  life  he  lived,  and  the  life  he 
seemed  to  be  doomed  to  live  from  the  very  first. 
When  a  weak  man  has  a  powerful  sense  of  duty 
he  is  hard  to  handle  by  those  who  have  some 
wisdom.  In  the  early  days  I  had  done  my  best 
to  induce  him  to  give  up  this  woman,  long  be- 
fore he  married  her,  when  he  w^as  but  a  foolish 
boy.  Now  I  once  more  did  my  best  to  get  him 
to  leave  her,  but  I  cannot  pretend  for  an  instant 
that  anything  I  said  or  did  would  have  had  any 
grave  effect  if  it  had  not  been  that  the  poor 
woman  was  herself  doomed  to  be  her  own  de- 
stroyer. Her  outbreaks  became  more  frequent, 
her  departures  from  his  miserable  roof  more 
prolonged.  The  windy  gaslight  of  the  slums 
appealed  to  her,  and  the  money  that  she  earned 
therein;  and  finally  when  it  seemed  that  she 
would  return  no  more  he  changed  his  rooms, 
and  through  the  landlady  of  the  wretched  house 


46  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

at  which  he  found  she  was  staying  he  arranged 
to  pay  her  ten  shillings  a  week.  As  I  know,  he 
often  made  much  less  than  ten  shillings  a  week, 
and  frequently  found  himself  starving  that  she 
might  have  so  much  more  to  spend  in  drink. 

This  went  on  for  years.  It  was  still  going  on 
in  1884  when  I  left  England  again  and  went  out 
to  Texas.  I  had  not  succeeded  in  making  a  suc- 
cessful attack  upon  the  English  Civil  Service, 
and  the  hateful  work  I  did  afterwards  caused 
my  health  to  break  down.  I  was  in  America  for 
three  years.  During  that  time  I  wrote  fully 
and  with  a  certain  regularity  to  Maitland. 
When  I  came  back  and  was  writing  "The  West- 
ern Trail,"  he  returned  me  the  letters  he  had  re- 
ceived from  me.  Among  them  I  found  some, 
frequently  dealing  with  literary  subjects,  ad- 
dressed from  Texas,  Minnesota,  Iowa,  the  Rocky 
Mountains,  Lower  British  Columbia,  Oregon, 
and  California.  In  his  letters  to  me  he  never 
referred  to  Marian,  but  I  gathered  that  his  life 
was  very  hard,  and,  of  course,  I  understood, 
without  his  saying  it,  that  he  was  still  supporting 
her.  I  found  that  this  was  so  when  I  returned 
to  England  in  1887.  At  that  time,  by  dint  of 
hard,  laborious  work,  which  included  a  great 
deal  of  teaching,  he  was  making  for  the  first 
time  something  of  a  living.  He  occupied  a  re- 
spectable but  very  dismal  flat  somewhere  at  the 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAXD  47 

back  of  Madame  Tussaud's,  in  a  place  at  that 
time  called  ^'Cumberland  Residences."  It  was 
afterwards  renamed  ^'Cumberland  Mansions," 
and  I  well  remember  Maitland's  frightful  and 
really  superfluous  scorn  of  the  snobbery  which 
spoke  in  such  a  change  of  name.  As  I  said,  we 
corresponded  the  whole  of  the  time  I  was  in 
America.  I  used  to  send  him  a  great  deal  of 
verse,  some  of  which  he  pronounced  actually 
poetry.  No  doubt  this  pleased  me  amazingly, 
and  I  wish  that  I  still  possessed  his  criticisms 
written  to  me  while  I  was  abroad.  It  is,  from 
any  point  of  view,  a  very  great  disaster  that  in 
some  way  which  I  cannot  account  for  I  have 
lost  all  his  letters  written  to  me  previous  to  1894. 
Our  prolonged,  and  practically  uninterrupted 
correspondence  began  in  1884,  so  I  have  actually 
lost  the  letters  of  ten  whole  years.  They  were 
interesting  from  many  points  of  view.  Much 
to  my  surprise,  while  I  was  in  America,  they 
came  to  me,  not  dated  in  the  ordinary  way,  but 
according  to  the  Comtist  calendar.  I  wTote  to 
him  for  an  explanation,  because  up  to  that  time 
I  had  never  heard  of  it.  In  his  answering  letter 
he  told  me  that  he  had  become  a  Positivist. 
This  was  doubtless  owing  to  the  fact  that  he 
had  come  accidentally  under  the  influence  of 
some  well-known  Positivists. 

It  seems  that  in  desperation  at  his  utter  failure 


48  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

to  make  a  real  living  at  literature  he  had  taken 
again  to  a  tutor's  work,  which  in  a  way  was 
where  he  began.  I  find  that  in  the  marriage 
certificate  between  him  and  Marian  Hilton  he 
called  himself  a  teacher  of  languages.  But  un- 
doubtedly he  loathed  teaching  save  in  those  rare 
instances  where  he  had  an  intelligent  and  en- 
thusiastic pupil.  At  the  time  that  I  came  back 
to  England  he  was  teaching  Harold  Edge- 
worth's  sons.  Without  a  doubt  Harold  Edge- 
worth  was  extremely  kind  to  Henry  Maitland 
and  perhaps  to  some  little  extent  appreciated 
him,  in  spite  of  the  preface  which  he  wrote  in 
later  years  to  the  posthumous  ''Basil."  He  was 
not  only  tutor  to  Harold  Edgeworth's  sons,  but 
was  also  received  at  his  house  as  a  guest.  He  met 
there  many  men  of  a  certain  literary  eminence; 
Cotter  Morrison,  for  instance,  of  whom  he  some- 
times spoke  to  me,  especially  of  his  once  char- 
acterising a  social  chatterer  as  a  cloaca  maxima 
of  small  talk.  He  also  met  Edmund  Roden, 
with  whom  he  remained  on  terms  of  friendship 
to  the  last,  often  visiting  him  in  his  house  at 
Felixstowe,  which  is  known  to  many  men  of 
letters.  I  think  the  fact  that  Edmund  Roden 
was  not  only  a  man  of  letters  but  also,  oddly 
enough,  the  manager  of  a  great  business,  ap- 
pealed in  some  way  to  Maitland's  sense  of  hu- 
mour.    He  liked  Roden  amazingly,  and  it  was 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  40 

through  him,  if  I  remember  rightly,  that  he  be- 
came socially  acquainted  with  George  Mere- 
dith, whom,  however,  he  had  met  in  a  business 
way  when  Meredith  was  reading  for  some  firm 
of  publishers  at  a  salary  of  two  hundred  a  year. 
Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  his  making  money  by 
some  tutorial  work,  Maitland  was  still  as  poor 
as  a  rat  in  a  cellar,  and  the  absurd  antinomy  be- 
tween the  society  he  frequented  at  times  and  his 
real  position,  made  him  sometimes  shout  with 
laughter  which  was  not  always  really  humorous. 
It  was  during  this  period  of  his  life  that  a  lady 
asked  him  at  an  "at-home''  what  his  experience 
was  in  the  management  of  butlers.  According 
to  what  he  told  me  he  replied  seriously  that  he 
always  strictly  refrained  from  having  anything 
to  do  with  men  servants,  as  he  much  preferred 
a  smart-looking  young  maid.  It  was  during 
this  period  that  he  did  some  work  with  a  man 
employed,  I  think,  at  the  London  Skin  Hos- 
pital. This  poor  fellow,  it  seemed,  desired  to 
rise  in  life,  and  possessed  ambition.  He  wanted 
to  pass  the  London  matriculation  examination 
and  thus  become,  as  he  imagined,  somebody  of 
importance.  Naturally  enough,  being  but  a 
clerk,  he  lacked  time  for  work,  and  the  arrange- 
ment come  to  between  him  and  Maitland  was 
that  his  teacher  should  go  to  his  lodging  at  seven 
o'clock  in  the  morning  and  give  him  his  lesson 


50  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

in  bed  before  breakfast.  As  this  was  just  be- 
fore the  time  that  Maitland  worked  for  Mr. 
Harold  Edgeworth,  he  was  too  poor,  so  he  said, 
to  pay  bus  fares  from  the  slum  in  which  he 
lived,  and  as  a  result  he  had  to  rise  at  six  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  walk  for  a  whole  hour  to  his 
pupil's  lodging,  and  then  was  very  frequently 
met  with  the  message  that  Mr.  So-and-so  felt 
much  too  tired  that  morning  to  receive  him,  and 
begged  Mr.  Maitland  would  excuse  him.  It  is 
a  curious  comment  on  the  authority  of  ^'The 
Meditations  of  Mark  Sumner,"  which  many 
cling  to  as  undoubtedly  authentic,  that  he  men- 
tions this  incident  as  if  he  did  not  mind  it.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  he  was  furiously  wrath  with  this 
man  for  not  rising  to  receive  him,  and  used  to  go 
away  in  a  state  of  almost  ungovernable  rage,  as 
he  told  me  many  and  many  a  time. 

After  my  return  from  America  we  used  to 
meet  regularly  once  a  week  on  Sunday  after- 
noons, for  I  had  now  commenced  my  own  initia- 
tion into  the  mystery  of  letters,  and  had  become 
an  author.  By  Maitland's  advice,  and,  if  I  may 
say  so,  almost  by  his  inspiration — most  certainly 
his  encouragement — I  wrote  ^^The  Western 
Trail,"  and  having  actually  printed  a  book  I 
felt  that  there  was  still  another  bond  between 
me  and  Maitland.  I  used  to  turn  up  regularly  at 
7  K  Cumberland  Residences  at  three  o'clock  on 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  51 

Sundays.  From  then  till  seven  we  talked  of 
our  work,  of  Latin  and  of  Greek,  of  French, 
and  of  everything  on  earth  that  touched  on  liter- 
ature. Long  before  seven  Maitland  used  to  ap- 
ply himself  very  seriously  to  the  subject  of  cook- 
ing. As  he  could  not  afford  two  fires  he  usually 
cooked  his  pot  on  the  fire  of  the  sitting-room. 
This  pot  of  his  was  a  great  institution.  It  re- 
minds me  something  of  the  gypsies'  pot  in  which 
they  put  everything  that  comes  to  hand.  Mait- 
land's  idea  of  cooking  was  fatness  and  a  certain 
amount  of  gross  abundance.  He  used  to  put 
into  this  pot  potatoes,  carrots,  turnips,  portions 
of  meat,  perhaps  a  steak,  or  on  great  days  a 
whole  rabbit,  all  of  which  he  had  bought  him- 
self, and  carried  home  with  his  own  hands.  We 
used  to  watch  the  pot  boiling,  and  perhaps  about 
seven  or  half-past  he  would  investigate  its  con- 
tents with  a  long,  two-pronged  iron  fork,  and 
finally  decide  much  to  our  joy  and  contentment 
that  the  contents  were  edible.  After  our  meal, 
for  which  I  was  usually  ready,  as  I  was  prac- 
tically starving  much  of  this  time  myself,  we 
removed  the  debris,  washed  up  in  company,  and 
resumed  our  literary  conversation,  which  some- 
times lasted  until  ten  or  eleven.  By  that  time 
Maitland  usually  turned  me  out,  although  my 
own  day  was  not  necessarily  done  for  several 
hours.     At  those  times  when  I  was  writing  at 


52  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

all,  I  used  to  write  between  midnight  and  six 
o'clock  in  the  morning. 

Those  were  great  talks  that  we  had,  but  they 
were  nearly  always  talks  about  ancient  times, 
about  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  so  far  as  we 
strayed  from  English  literature.  It  may  seem 
an  odd  thing,  and  it  is  odd  until  it  is  explained, 
that  he  had  very  little  interest  in  the  Renais- 
sance. There  is  still  in  existence  a  letter  of  his 
to  Edmund  Roden  saying  how  much  he  re- 
gretted that  he  took  no  interest  in  it.  That  letter 
was,  I  think,  dated  from  Siena,  a  city  of  the 
Renaissance.  The  truth  of  the  matter  is  that  he 
was  essentially  a  creature  of  the  Renaissance 
himself,  a  pure  Humanist.  For  this  very  rea- 
son he  displayed  no  particular  pleasure  in  that 
period.  He  was  interested  in  the  time  in  which 
the  men  of  the  Renaissance  revelled  after  its 
rediscovery  and  the  new  birth  of  learning.  He 
would  have  been  at  his  best  if  he  had  been  born 
when  that  time  was  in  flower.  The  fathers  of 
the  Renaissance  rediscovered  Rome  and  Athens, 
and  so  did  he.  No  one  can  persuade  me  that 
if  this  had  been  his  fate  his  name  w^ould  not  now 
have  been  as  sacred  to  all  who  love  literature 
as  those  of  Petrarch  and  his  glorious  fellows. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  it  was  this  very  quality  of 
his  which  gave  him  such  a  lofty  and  lordly  con- 
tempt for  the  obscurantist  theologian.     In  my 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  53 

mind  I  can  see  him  treating  with  that  irony 
which  was  ever  his  favourite  weapon,  some  relic 
of  the  dark  ages  of  the  schools.  In  those  hours 
that  we  spent  together  it  was  wonderful  to  hear 
him  talk  of  Greece  even  before  he  knew  it,  for 
he  saw  it  as  it  had  been,  or  as  his  mind  made 
him  think  it  had  been,  not  with  the  modern 
Greek — who  is  perhaps  not  a  Greek  at  all — 
shouting  in  the  market-place.  I  think  that  he 
had  a  historical  imagination  of  a  very  high  or- 
der, even  though  he  undoubtedly  failed  when 
endeavouring  to  use  it.  That  was  because  he 
used  it  in  the  wrong  medium.  But  when  he  saw 
the  Acropolis  in  his  mind  he  saw  it  before  the 
Turks  had  stabled  their  horses  in  the  Parthenon, 
and  before  the  English,  worse  vandals  than  the 
Turks,  had  brought  away  to  the  biting  smoke  of 
London  the  marbles  of  Pheidias.  Even  as  a 
boy  he  loved  the  roar  and  fume  of  Rome,  al- 
though he  had  not  yet  seen  it  and  could  only  im- 
agine it.  He  saw  in  Italy  the  land  of  Dante  and 
Boccaccio,  a  land  still  peopled  in  the  south  to- 
wards Sicily  with  such  folks  as  these  and  Horace 
had  known.  My  own  education  had  been 
wrought  out  in  strange,  rough  places  in  the  new 
lands.  It  was  a  fresh  education  for  me  to  come 
back  to  London  and  sit  with  Maitland  on  these 
marvellous  Sunday  afternoons  and  evenings 
when  he  wondered  if  the  time  would  ever  come 


54  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

for  him  to  see  Italy  and  Greece  in  all  reality. 
It  was  for  the  little  touches  of  realism,  the  little 
pictures  in  the  Odes,  that  he  loved  Horace,  and 
loved  still  more  his  Virgil ;  and,  even  more,  The- 
ocritus and  Moshos,  for  Theocritus  w^rote  things 
which  were  ancient  and  yet  modern,  full  of 
the  truth  of  humanity.  Like  all  the  men  of  the 
Renaissance  he  turned  his  eyes  wistfully  to  the 
immemorial  past,  renewed  in  the  magic  alembic 
of  his  own  mind. 

Nevertheless,  great  as  these  hours  were  that 
we  spent  together,  they  were  sometimes  deeply 
melancholy,  and  he  had  nothing  to  console  him 
for  the  miseries  which  were  ever  in  the  back- 
ground. It  was  upon  one  of  these  Sundays,  I 
think  early  in  January,  1888,  that  I  found  him  in 
a  peculiarly  melancholy  and  desperate  condi- 
tion. No  doubt  he  was  overworked,  for  he  al- 
ways was  overworked;  but  he  said  that  he  could 
stand  it  no  longer,  he  must  get  out  of  London 
for  a  few  days  or  so.  For  some  reason  which  I 
cannot  for  the  world  understand,  he  decided  to 
go  to  Eastbourne,  and  begged  me  to  go  with 
him.  Why  he  should  have  selected,  in  Christ- 
mas weather  and  an  east  wind,  what  is  possibly 
the  coldest  town  in  England  in  such  conditions, 
I  cannot  say,  but  I  remember  that  the  journey 
down  to  the  sea  was  mercilessly  cold.  Of 
course  we  went  third  class,  and  the  carriages 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  55 

were  totally  unheated.  We  were  both  of  us 
practically  in  extreme  poverty.  I  was  living  in 
a  single  room  in  Chelsea,  for  which  I  paid  four 
shillings  a  week,  and  for  many  months  my  total 
weekly  expenses  were  something  under  twelve 
shillings.  At  that  particular  moment  he  was 
doing  extremely  badly,  and  the  ten  shillings  that 
he  paid  regularly  to  his  wife  frequently  left  him 
with  insufficient  to  live  upon.  I  can  hardly 
understand  how  it  was  that  he  determined  to 
spend  even  the  little  extra  money  needed  for 
such  a  journey.  When  we  reached  Eastbourne 
we  walked  with  our  bags  in  our  hands  down 
to  the  sea  front,  and  then,  going  into  a  poor  back 
street,  selected  rooms.  It  was  perhaps  what  he 
and  I  often  called  '^the  native  malignity  of  mat- 
ter," and  his  extreme  ill  luck  in  the  matter  of 
landladies,  which  pursued  him  for  ever  through- 
out his  life  in  lodgings,  that  the  particular  land- 
lady of  the  house  in  which  we  took  refuge  was 
extraordinarily  incapable.  The  dwelling  itself 
was  miserably  draughty  and  cold,  and  wretch- 
edly furnished.  The  east  wind  which  blows 
over  the  flat  marshes  between  Eastbourne  and 
the  Downs  entered  the  house  at  every  crack,  and 
there  were  many  of  them.  The  first  night  we 
were  in  the  town  it  snowed  very  heavily,  and  in 
our  shabby  little  sitting-room  we  shivered  in 
spite  of  the  starved  fire.     We  sat  there  with  our 


56  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

overcoats  on  and  did  our  best  to  be  cheerful. 
Heaven  alone  knows  what  we  talked  of,  but  most 
likely,  and  very  possibly,  it  may  have  been 
Greek  metres,  always  his  great  passion.  Yet 
neither  of  us  was  in  good  case.  We  both  had 
trouble  enough  on  our  shoulders.  I  remember 
that  he  spoke  very  little  of  his  wife,  for  I  would 
not  let  him  do  so,  although  I  knew  she  was  most 
tremendously  on  his  mind,  and  was,  in  fact,  what 
had  driven  him  for  the  moment  out  of  London. 
Of  course,  he  had  a  very  natural  desire  that 
she  should  die  and  have  done  with  life,  with 
that  life  which  must  have  been  a  torment  to  her- 
self as  it  was  a  perpetual  torture  and  a  running 
sore  to  him.  At  the  same  time  the  poor  fellow 
felt  that  he  had  no  right  to  wish  that  she  would 
die,  but  I  could  see  the  wish  in  his  eyes,  and 
heaven  knows  that  I  wished  it  fervently  for  him. 
The  next  morning  we  went  for  a  long  walk 
across  the  Downs  to  the  little  village  of  East 
Dean.  It  was  blowing  a  whole  gale  from  the 
north  east,  and  it  was  quite  impossible  to  go  near 
the  steep  cliffs.  The  snow  was  in  places  two 
feet  deep,  and  a  sunk  road  across  the  Downs 
was  level  with  the  turf.  I  think  now  that  none 
but  madmen  would  have  gone  out  on  such  a  day. 
Doubtless  we  were  mad  enough ;  at  any  rate  we 
were  writers,  and  by  all  traditions  had  the  right  to 
be  mad.    But  when  we  once  got  started  we  meant 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  57 

going  through  it  at  all  events.  I  did  not  re- 
member many  colder  days,  in  spite  of  my  trav- 
els, but  we  persevered,  and  at  last  came  to  the 
little  village  and  there  took  refuge  in  the  public- 
house  and  drank  beer.  Maitland,  with  his  ex- 
traordinary mixture  of  fine  taste  and  something 
which  was  almost  grossness  in  regard  to  food, 
loved  all  malt  liquors — I  think  partly  because 
he  felt  some  strange  charm  in  their  being  his- 
torically English  drinks.  The  walk  back  to 
Eastbourne  tried  us  both  hard,  for  neither  of 
us  had  been  well  fed  for  months,  and  the  wind 
and  snow  in  our  faces  made  walking  heavy  and 
difficult.  Nevertheless  Maitland  was  now  al- 
most boisterously  cheerful,  as  he  often  was  out- 
wardly when  he  had  most  reason  to  be  the  op- 
posite. While  he  walked  back  the  chief  topic 
of  conversation  was  the  very  excellent  nature  of 
the  pudding  which  he  had  instructed  our  land- 
lady to  prepare  against  a  hungry  return. 

He  was  always  extraordinarily  fond  of  rich, 
succulent  dishes.  A  fritto  misto  for  instance, 
made  him  shout  for  joy,  though  he  never  met 
with  it  until  he  went  to  Italy.  With  what  in- 
imitable fervour  of  the  gastronomic  mind  would 
he  declare  these  preferences!  Dr.  Johnson  said 
that  in  a  haggis  there  was  much  ''fine,  confused 
feeding,"  and  Maitland  undoubtedly  agreed 
with  him,  as  he  always  said  when  he  quoted  the 


58  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

passage.  In  many  of  his  books  there  are  ex- 
amples of  his  curious  feeling  with  regard  to 
food.  They  are  especially  frequent  in  "Pater- 
noster Row" ;  as,  for  instance,  when  one  charac- 
ter says:  "Better  dripping  this  than  I've  had 
for  a  long  time.  .  .  .  Now,  with  a  little  pepper 
and  salt,  this  bread  and  dripping  is  as  appetising 
a  food  as  I  know.  I  often  make  a  dinner  of 
it."  To  which  the  other  replies :  "I  have  done 
the  same  myself  before  now.  Do  you  ever  buy 
pease-pudding?"  and  to  this  the  Irishman's  re- 
ply was  enthusiastic.  "I  should  think  so!  I 
get  magnificent  pennyworths  at  a  shop  in  Cleve- 
land Street,  of  a  very  rich  quality  indeed.  Ex- 
cellent faggots  they  have  there,  too.  I'll  give 
you  a  supper  of  them  one  night  before  you  go." 
I  had  often  heard  of  this  particular  shop  in 
Cleveland  Street,  and  of  one  shop  where  they 
sold  beef,  kept  by  a  man  whose  pride  was  that 
he  had  been  carving  beef  behind  the  counter  for 
thirty  years  without  a  holiday. 

And  now  we  were  hurrying  back  to  East- 
bourne, Maitland  said,  not  because  it  was  cold; 
not  because  the  north-east  wind  blew;  not  be- 
cause we  were  exposed  to  the  very  bitterest 
weather  we  remembered;  but  because  of  an  ex- 
ceedingly rich  compound  known  as  an  apple 
pudding.  He  and  the  wind  worked  me  up  to 
an  almost  equal  expression  of  ardour,  and  thus 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  59 

we  came  back  to  our  poverty-stricken  den  in 
good  spirits.  But,  alas,  the  dinner  that  day  was 
actually  disastrous.  The  meat  was  grossly  over- 
done, the  vegetables  were  badly  cooked,  the  beer 
was  thin  and  flat.  We  were  in  dismay,  but  still 
we  said  to  each  other  hopefully  that  there  was 
the  pudding  to  come.  It  was  brought  on  and 
looked  very  fine,  and  Maitland  cut  into  it  with 
great  joy  and  gave  me  a  generous  helping.  I 
know  that  I  tasted  it  eagerly,  but  to  my  tongue 
there  was  an  alien  flavour  about  it.  I  looked 
up  and  said  to  Maitland,  'Tt  is  very  curious, 
but  this  pudding  seems  to  me  to  taste  of  kero- 
sene." Maitland  laughed,  but  when  his  turn 
came  to  try  he  laughed  no  longer,  for  the  pud- 
ding actually  did  taste  of  lamp  oil.  It  ap- 
peared, on  plaintive  and  bitter  inquiry,  that  our 
unfortunate  landlady  after  making  it  had  put 
it  under  the  shelf  on  which  she  kept  her  lamp 
gear.  We  subsided  on  melancholy  and  mouldy 
cheese.  This  disappointment,  however  childish 
it  may  appear  to  the  better  fed,  was  to  Henry 
Maitland  something  really  serious.  Those  who 
have  read  ^'The  Meditations  of  Mark  Sumner," 
without  falling  into  the  error  of  thinking  that 
the  talk  about  food  in  that  melancholy  book 
was  only  his  fun,  will  understand  that  it  was  a 
very  serious  matter  with  Maitland.  It  took  all 
his  philosophy  and  a  very  great  deal  of  mine  to 


60  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

survive  the  tragedy,  and  to  go  on  talking  as  we 
did  of  new  words  and  the  riches  of  philology. 
And  as  we  talked  the  wind  roared  down  our 
street  in  a  vicious  frenzy.  It  was  a  monstrously 
bad  time  to  have  come  to  Eastbourne,  and  we 
had  no  compensations. 

It  was  the  next  night  that  the  great  news 
came.  In  spite  of  the  dreariest  weather  we  had 
spent  most  of  the  day  in  the  open  air.  After 
our  dinner,  which  this  time  was  more  of  a  suc- 
cess, or  at  any  rate  less  of  a  tragic  failure,  we 
were  sitting  hugging  the  fire  to  keep  warm  when 
a  telegram  was  brought  in  for  him.  He  read  it 
in  silence  and  handed  it  over  to  me  with  the 
very  strangest  look  upon  his  face  that  I  had  ever 
seen.  It  was  unsigned,  and  came  from  London. 
The  message  was:  ^'Your  wife  is  dead." 
There  was  nothing  on  earth  more  desirable  for 
him  than  that  she  should  die,  the  poor  wretch 
truly  being  like  a  destructive  wind,  for  she"  had 
torn  his  heart,  scorched  his  very  soul,  and  de- 
stroyed him  in  the  beginning  of  his  life.  All 
irreparable  disasters  came  from  her,  and  through 
her.  Had  it  not  been  for  her  he  might  then 
have  held,  or  have  begun  to  hope  for,  a  great 
position  at  one  of  the  universities.  And  now  a 
voice  out  of  the  unknown  cried  that  she  was 
dead. 

He  said  to  me,  with  a  shaking  voice  and  shak- 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  61 

ing  hands,  ''I  cannot  believe  it — I  cannot  believe 
it."  He  was  as  white  as  paper;  for  it  meant  so 
much — not  only  freedom  from  the  disaster  and 
shame  and  misery  that  drained  his  life-blood, 
but  it  would  mean  a  cessation  of  money  pay- 
ments at  a  time  when  every  shilling  was  very 
hard  to  win.  And  yet  this  was  when  he  was 
comparatively  well  known,  for  it  was  two  years 
after  the  publication  of  "The  Mob."  And  still, 
though  his  books  ran  into  many  editions,  for 
some  inexplicable  reason,  which  I  yet  hope  to 
explain,  he  sold  them  one  after  another  for  fifty 
pounds.  And  I  knew  how  he  worked;  how 
hard,  how  remorselessly.  I  knew  who  the  chief 
character  was  in  "Paternoster  Row"  before 
"Paternoster  Row"  was  written.  I  knew  with 
what  inexpressible  anguish  of  soul  he  laboured, 
with  what  dumb  rage  against  destiny.  And 
now  here  was  something  like  freedom  at  last,  if 
only  it  were  true. 

This  message  came  so  late  at  night  that  there 
was  no  possibility  of  telegraphing  to  London  to 
verify  it  even  if  he  had  been  sure  that  he  could 
get  to  the  original  sender.  It  was  also  much  too 
late  to  go  up  to  town.  We  sat  silently  for  hours, 
and  I  knew  that  he  was  going  back  over  the 
burning  marl  of  the  past.  Sometimes  he  did 
speak,  asking  once  and  again  if  it  could  be  true, 
and  I  saw  that  while  he  was  still  uncertain  he 


62  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

was  bitter  and  pitiless.     Yet  if  she  were  only 
really  dead  .  .  . 

We  went  up  to  town  together  in  the  morning. 
In  the  train  he  told  me  that  while  he  was  still 
uncertain,  he  could  not  possibly  visit  the  place 
she  lived  in,  and  he  begged  me  to  go  there 
straight  and  bring  him  word  as  to  the  truth  of 
this  report.  I  was  to  explore  the  desperate  slum 
in  the  New  Cut  in  which  she  had  exhausted  the 
last  dreadful  years  of  her  life,  and  upon  leaving 
him  I  went  there  at  once.  With  Maitland's  full 
permission  I  described  something  of  the  milieu 
in  ''John  Quest."  On  reaching  the  New  Cut* 
I  dived  into  an  inner  slum  from  an  outer  one, 
and  at  last  found  myself  in  a  kitchen  which  was 
only  about  eight  or  nine  feet  square.  It  was, 
of  course,  exceedingly  dirty.  The  person  in 
charge  of  it  was  a  cheerful  red-headed  girl  of 
about  eighteen  years  of  age.  On  learning  the 
cause  of  my  visit  she  went  out  and  brought  in 
her  mother,  and  I  soon  verified  the  fact  that 
Marian  Maitland  was  dead.  She  had  died  the 
first  bitter  night  we  spent  at  Eastbourne,  and  was 
found  next  morning  without  any  blankets,  and 
with  no  covering  for  her  emaciated  body  but  a 
damp  and  draggled  gown. 

Presently  the  neighbours  came  in  to  see  the 
gentleman  who  was  interested  in  this  woman's 
death.     They  talked  eagerly  of  the  funeral,  for, 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  63 

as  Maitland  knew  only  too  well,  a  funeral,  to 
these  people,  is  one  of  their  great  irregular  but 
recurring  festivals.  At  Maitland's  desire  I  gave 
them  carte  blanche  up  to  a  certain  sum,  and  I 
think  they  felt  that,  as  the  agent  of  the  husband,  I 
behaved  very  well.  Of  course  they  knew  all  about 
the  poor  girl  who  lay  dead  upstairs,  and  although 
they  were  honest  enough  people  in  their  way, 
and  though  the  red-headed  girl  to  whom  I  first 
talked  worked  hard  in  a  factory  making  hooks 
and  eyes,  as  she  told  me,  they  seemed  to  have 
no  moral  feelings  whatever  about  her  very  ob- 
vious profession.  I  myself  did  not  see  the  dead 
woman.  I  was  not  then  acquainted  with  death, 
save  among  strangers.  I  could  not  bring  my- 
self to  look  upon  her.  Although  death  is  so 
dreadful  always,  the  surroundings  of  death  may 
make  things  worse.  But  still,  she  was  dead,  and 
I  hastened  back  to  Maitland  to  tell  him  so.  It 
was  a  terrible  and  a  painful  relief  to  him;  and 
when  he  was  sure  she  was  gone,  he  grieved  for 
her,  grieved  for  what  she  might  have  been,  and 
for  what  she  was.  He  remembered  now  that  at 
intervals  she  used  to  send  him  heart-breaking 
messages  asking  to  be  forgiven,  messages  that 
even  his  unwisdom  at  last  could  not  listen  to. 
But  he  said  very  little.  So  far  as  the  expres- 
sion of  his  emotions  went  he  often  had  very 
great  self-control.     It  is  a  pity  that  his  self-con- 


64  HENRY  MAITLAND 

trol  so  rarely  extended  itself  to  acts.  But  now 
he  was  free.  Those  who  have  forged  their  own 
chains,  and  lived  in  a  hell  of  their  own  dread- 
ful making,  can  understand  what  this  is  and 
what  it  means.  But  he  did  go  down  to  the  pit 
in  which  she  died,  and  when  I  saw  him  a  day 
or  two  later  he  was  strangely  quiet,  even  for 
him.  He  said  to  me,  "My  dear  chap,  she  had 
kept  my  photograph,  and  a  very  little  engraving 
of  the  Madonna  di  San  Sisto,  all  these  years  of 
horrible  degradation."  He  spoke  in  the  almost 
inaudible  tone  that  was  characteristic  of  him, 
especially  at  that  time.  We  arranged  the  fun- 
eral together,  and  she  was  buried.  If  only  all 
the  misery  that  she  had  caused  him  could  have 
been  buried  with  her,  it  would  have  been  well. 
She  died  of  what  I  may  call,  euphemistically, 
specific  laryngitis.  Once  he  told  me  a  dreadful 
story  about  her  in  hospital.  One  of  the  doc- 
tors at  St.  Thomas's  had  questioned  her,  and 
after  her  answers  sent  for  Maitland,  and  speak- 
ing to  him  on  the  information  given  him  by  the 
wife,  was  very  bitter.  Henry,  even  as  he  told 
me  this  years  after,  shook  with  rage  and  indig- 
nation. He  had  not  been  able  to  defend  himself 
without  exposing  his  wife's  career. 


CHAPTER  III 

THERE  are  many  methods  of  writing 
biography.  Each  has  its  advantages, 
even  the  chronological  compilation. 
But  chronology  is  no  strong  point  of  mine,  and 
in  this  sketch  I  shall  put  but  little  stress  on 
dates.  There  is  great  advantage  in  describing 
things  as  they  impress  themselves  on  the  writer. 
A  portrait  gains  in  coherency  and  completeness 
by  temporary  omissions  more  than  it  can  ever 
gain  by  the  empty  endeavour  to  handle  each  pe- 
riod fully.  In  this  last  chapter  I  might  have 
endeavoured  to  describe  Maitland  at  work,  or  to 
speak  of  his  ambitions,  or  even  to  criticise  what 
he  had  already  done,  or  to  give  my  own  views  of 
what  he  meant  to  achieve.  There  is  authority 
for  every  method,  and  most  authorities  are  bad, 
save  Boswell — and  few  would  pine  for  BoswelTs 
qualities  at  the  price  of  his  failings.  Yet  one 
gets  help  from  him  everywhere,  little  as  it  may 
show.  Only  the  other  day  I  came  across  a  pas- 
sage in  the  ^'Journal  of  a  Tour  to  the  Hebrides" 
which  has  some  value.  Reporting  Johnson,  he 
writes:     "Talking  of  biography,  he  said  he  did 

65 


66  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

not  think  the  life  of  any  literary  man  in  England 
had  been  well  written.  Besides  the  common  in- 
cidents of  life  it  should  tell  us  his  studies,  his 
mode  of  living,  the  means  by  which  he  attained 
to  excellence,  and  his  opinion  of  his  own  works." 
Such  I  shall  endeavour  to  do.  Nevertheless 
Johnson  was  wrong.  Good  work  had  then  been 
done  in  biography  by  Walton,  whose  Lives,  by 
the  way,  Maitland  loved;  and  Johnson  himself 
was  not  far  from  great  excellence  when  he  de- 
scribed his  friend  Savage  in  the  ''Lives  of  the 
Poets"  in  spite  of  its  want  of  colloquial  ease. 
There  came  in  then  the  value  of  friendship  and 
actual  personal  knowledge,  as  it  did  in  Boswell's 
*'Life,"  I  can  only  hope  that  my  own  deep  ac- 
quaintance with  Maitland  will  compensate  for 
my  want  of  skill  in  the  art  of  writing  lives,  for 
which  novel-writing  is  but  a  poor  training.  Yet 
the  deeper  one's  knowledge  the  better  it  is  to 
simplify  as  one  goes,  taking  things  by  them- 
selves, going  forwards  or  backwards  as  may 
seem  best,  without  care  of  tradition,  especially 
where  tradition  is  mostly  bad.  We  do  not  write 
biography  in  England  now  as  Romain  Rolland 
writes  that  of  Beethoven.  Seldom  are  we 
grieved  for  our  heroes,  or  rejoice  with  them. 
Photography,  or  the  photographic  portrait,  is 
more  in  request  than  an  impression.  However, 
to  resume  in  my  own  way,  having  to  be  content 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  67 

with  that,  and  caring  little  for  opinion,  that  fluc- 
tuant critic. 

Long  as  our  friendship  existed  it  is  perhaps 
curious  that  we  never  called  each  other,  except 
on  very  rare  occasions,  by  anything  but  our  sur- 
names. This,  I  think,  is  due  to  the  fact  that 
we  had  been  at  Moorhampton  College  together. 
It  is,  I  imagine,  the  same  thing  with  all  school- 
boys. Provided  there  is  no  nickname  given, 
men  who  have  been  chums  at  school  seem  to 
prefer  the  surname  by  which  they  knew  their 
friends  in  the  early  days.  I  have  often  noticed 
there  is  a  certain  savage  tendency  on  the  part  of 
boys  to  suppress  their  Christian  names,  their 
own  peculiar  mark.  And  sometimes  I  have 
wondered  whether  this  is  not  in  some  obscure 
way  a  survival  of  the  savage  custom  of  many 
tribes  in  which  nobody  is  ever  mentioned  by  his 
right  name,  because  in  that  name  there  inheres 
mysteriously  the  very  essence  of  his  being  and 
inheritance,  the  knowledge  of  which  by  others 
may  expose  him  to  some  occult  danger. 

I  believe  I  said  above  that  from  the  time  I 
first  met  Maitland  after  my  return  from  Aus- 
tralia, until  I  went  away  again  to  Arizona,  I  was 
working  in  the  Admiralty  and  the  India  Office 
as  a  writer  at  tenpence  an  hour.  No  doubt  I 
thought  the  pay  exiguous,  and  my  prospects 
worth  nothing.     Yet  when  I  came  back  from 


68  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

America  and  found  him  domiciled  at  7  K  Cum- 
berland Residences,  my  economic  basis  in  life 
became    even    more    exiguous,    whatever   hope 
might  have  said  of  my  literary  future.     I  w^as, 
in  fact,  a  great  deal  poorer  than  Maitland.     He 
lived  in  a  flat  and  had  at  least  two  rooms  and  a 
kitchen.     Yet  it  was  a  horrible  place  of  extraor- 
dinary gloom,  and  its  back  windows  overlooked 
the  roaring  steam  engines  of  the  Metropolitan 
Railway.     In  some  ways  no  doubt  my  own  apart- 
ment, when  I  took  to  living  by  myself  in  Chel- 
sea, was  superior  in  cheerfulness  to  7  K.    Shortly 
after  my  return  to  England,  when  I  had  ex- 
pended the  fifty  pounds  I  received  for  my  first 
book,  'The  Western  Trail,"  I  took  a  single  room 
in  Chelsea,  put  in  a  few  sticks  of  furniture  given 
to  me  by  my  people,  and  commenced  housekeep- 
ing on  my  own  account  on  all  I  could  make  and 
the  temporary  ten  shillings  a  week  allowed  me 
by  my  father,  who  at  that  time,  for  all  his  na- 
tive respect  for  literature,  regarded  the  practice 
of  it  with  small  hope  and  much  suspicion.     I 
know  that  it  greatly  amused  Maitland  to  hear 
of  his  views  on  the  subject  of  the  self  revelations 
in  'The  Western  Trail,"  which  dealt  with  my 
life  in  Western  America.     After  reading  that 
book  he  did  not  speak  to  me  for  three  days,  and 
told  my  younger  brother,  'These  are  pretty  rev- 
elations about  your  brother  having  been  a  com- 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  69 

mon  loafer."  At  this  Maitland  roared,  but  he 
roared  none  the  less  when  he  understood  that 
three  columns  of  laudation  in  one  of  the  reviews 
entirely  changed  my  father's  view  of  that  particu- 
lar book. 

I  should  not  trouble  to  say  anything  about  my 
own  particular  surroundings  if  it  were  not  that 
in  a  sense  they  also  became  Maitland's,  although 
I  went  more  frequently  to  him  than  he  came  to 
me.  Nevertheless  he  was  quite  familiar  with 
my  one  room  and  often  had  meals  there  which 
I  cooked  for  him.  Of  course  at  that  time,  from 
one  point  of  view,  I  was  but  a  literary  beginner 
and  aspirant,  while  Maitland  was  a  rising  and 
respected  man,  who  certainly  might  be  poor, 
and  was  poor,  but  still  he  had  published  ''The 
Mob"  and  other  books,  his  name  was  well 
known,  and  his  prospects,  from  the  literary,  if 
not  from  the  financial  point  of  view,  seemed  very 
good.  I  was  the  author  of  one  book,  the  result 
of  three  years'  bitter  hard  experience,  written 
in  twenty-six  days  as  a  tour  de  force,  and  though 
I  had  ambition  I  seemed  to  have  nothing  more 
to  write  about.  From  my  own  point  of  view 
Maitland  was,  of  course,  very  successful.  His 
flat  with  more  rooms  than  one  in  it  was  a  man- 
sion, and  he  was  certainly  making  something 
like  a  hundred  a  year.  Still,  I  think  that  when 
he  came  down  to  me  and  found  me  compara- 


70  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

lively  independent,  he  rather  envied  me.  At 
any  rate  I  had  not  to  keep  an  errant  wife  on  the 
money  that  I  made  with  infinite  difficulty.  He 
came  to  see  me  in  Chelsea  in  my  very  early  days, 
and  took  great  joy  in  my  conditions.  For  one 
thing  I  had  no  attendance  with  this  room.  I 
was  supposed  to  look  after  it  for  myself  in  every 
way.  This,  he  assured  me,  made  my  estate  the 
more  gracious,  as  any  one  can  understand  who 
remembers  all  that  he  has  said  about  landladies 
and  lodging-house  servants  and  charwomen. 
He  was  overjoyed  with  the  list  of  things  I 
bought:  a  fender  and  fire-irons,  a  coal-scuttle,  a 
dust-bin,  and  blacking  brushes.  He  found  me 
one  day  shaving  by  the  aid  of  my  own  dim  re- 
flection in  the  glass  of  an  etching  which  I  had 
brought  from  home,  because  I  had  no  looking- 
glass  and  no  money  to  spare  to  buy  one.  I  re- 
member we  frequently  went  together  over  the 
question  of  finance.  Incidentally  I  found  his 
own  habit  of  buying  cooked  meat  peculiarly  ex- 
travagant. I  have  a  book  somewhere  among  my 
papers  in  which  I  kept  accounts  for  my  first 
three  months  in  Chelsea  to  see  how  I  was  going 
to  live  on  ten  shillings  a  week,  which  Maitland 
assured  me  was  preposterous  riches,  even  if  I 
managed  to  make  no  more. 

Naturally  enough,  seeing  that  we  had  been 
friends  for  so  long,  and  seeing  that  he  had  en- 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  71 

couraged  me  so  greatly  to  write  my  first  book, 
he  took  a  vast  interest  in  all  my  proceedings,  and 
was  very  joyous,  as  he  would  have  said,  to  ob- 
serve that  I  could  not  afford  sheets  but  slept  in 
the  blankets  which  I  had  carried  all  over  Amer- 
ica. I  seek  no  sympathy  on  this  point,  for  after 
all  it  was  not  a  matter  of  my  being  unable  to 
afford  linen;  it  is  impossible  for  the  average 
comfortable  citizen  to  understand  how  disagree- 
able sheets  become  after  some  thousands  of  nights 
spent  camping  in  mere  wool,  even  of  the  cheap- 
est. It  took  me  years  to  learn  to  resign  myself 
to  cold  linen,  or  even  more  sympathetic  cotton, 
when  I  became  a  respectable  householder. 

In  the  neighbourhood  where  I  lived  there 
was,  of  course,  a  great  artistic  colony,  and  as  I 
knew  one  or  two  artists  already,  I  soon  became 
acquainted  with  all  the  others.  Many  of  them 
were  no  richer  than  myself,  and  as  Bohemia  and 
the  belief  that  there  was  still  a  Bohemia  formed 
one  of  Maitland's  greatest  joys,  he  was  always 
delighted  to  hear  of  any  of  our  remarkable  shifts 
to  live.  It  is  an  odd  thing  to  reflect  that  A.  D. 
Mack,  Frank  Wynne,  Albert  Croft,  and  three 
other  artists  whose  names  I  now  forget,  and  I 
once  had  a  glorious  supper  of  fried  fish  served  in 
a  newspaper  on  the  floor  of  an  empty  studio.  The 
only  thing  I  missed  on  that  particular  occasion 
was   Maitland's   presence,   but,   of  course,   the 


72  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

trouble  was  that  Maitland  would  seldom  asso- 
ciate with  anybody  whom  he  did  not  know  al- 
ready, and  I  could  rarely  get  him  to  make  the  ac- 
quaintance of  my  own  friends.  Yet  such  experi- 
ences as  we  were  sometimes  reduced  to  more  than 
proved  to  him  that  his  dear  Bohemia  existed, 
though  later  in  his  life,  as  one  sees  in  "Mark 
Sumner,"  he  often  seemed  to  doubt  whether  it 
was  still  extant.  On  this  point  I  used  to  console 
him,  saying  that  where  any  two  artists  butted 
their  foolish  heads  against  the  economic  system, 
there  was  Bohemia ;  Bohemia,  in  fact,  was  living 
on  a  course  of  high  ideals,  whatever  the  world 
said  of  them.  At  this  hour  there  are  writers 
learning  their  business  on  a  little  oatmeal,  as 
George  Meredith  did,  or  destroying  their  diges- 
tions, as  I  did  mine  and  Henry  Maitland's,  on 
canned  corn  beef.  Even  yet,  perhaps,  some 
writers  and  artists  are  making  their  one  big  meal 
a  day  on  fried  fish. 

One  Sunday  when  I  missed  going  to  Mait- 
land's, because  he  was  then  out  of  town  visiting 
his  family,  I  had  a  tale  for  him  on  his  return. 
It  appeared  that  I  had  been  writing,  and  had 
got  so  disgusted  with  the  result  of  it  that  I  found 
I  could  not  possibly  stay  in  my  room,  and  so  de- 
termined to  go  round  to  my  friend  Mack.  No 
sooner  had  I  made  up  my  mind  on  this  subject 
than  there  was  a  knock  at  the  door,  and  pres- 


or  HENRY  MAITLAND  73 

ently  in  came  Mack  himself.  I  said  promptly, 
''It  is  no  good  your  coming  here,  for  I  was  just 
going  round  to  you."  Whereupon  he  replied, 
''It  is  no  good  your  coming  to  me  because  I  have 
no  coal,  no  coke,  and  nobody  will  give  me  any 
more  because  I  owe  for  so  much  already."  I 
replied  that  I  was  not  going  to  stay  in  my  room 
in  any  case,  and  affirmed  that  I  would  rather 
be  in  his  studio  in  the  cold  than  the  room  where 
I  was.  Whereupon  he  suddenly  discovered  that 
my  scuttle  was  actually  full  of  coal,  and  proposed 
to  take  it  round  to  the  studio.  This  seemed 
a  really  brilliant  idea,  and  after  much  discus- 
sion of  ways  and  means  my  inventive  faculty 
produced  an  old  portmanteau  and  several  news- 
papers, and  after  wrapping  up  lumps  of  coal 
in  separate  pieces  of  paper  we  packed  the  port- 
manteau with  the  coal  and  carried  it  round  to 
the  studio  in  Manresa  Road.  This  seemed  to 
Maitland  so  characteristic  of  an  artist's  life  that 
he  was  very  much  delighted  when  I  told  him. 

It  is  an  odd  thing  that  in  one  matter  Maitland 
and  I  were  at  that  time  much  alike.  From 
most  points  of  view  there  can  hardly  have  been 
two  more  different  men,  for  he  was  essentially  a 
man  of  the  study  and  the  cloister,  while  I  was 
far  more  naturally  a  man  of  the  open  air. 
Nevertheless,  when  it  came  to  journalism  we 
were  both  of  the  same  mind.     While  I  was  away 


74  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

from  England  and  he  was  teaching  Harold 
Edgeworth's  sons,  Edgeworth  introduced  him 
to  John  Harley,  then  editing  the  Piccadilly  Ga- 
zette, who  offered,  and  would  no  doubt  have 
kept  to  it,  to  use  as  much  matter  as  possible  if 
Maitland  would  supply  him  with  something  in 
the  journalistic  form.  Apparently  he  found  it 
too  much  against  his  natural  grain  to  do  this 
work,  and  I  was  now  in  the  same  predicament. 
It  is  true  that  I  had  something  of  a  natural 
journalistic  flair  which  he  lacked,  but  my  nose 
for  a  likely  article  was  rendered  entirely  useless 
to  me  by  the  fact  that  I  never  could  write  any- 
thing until  I  had  thought  about  it  for  several 
days,  by  which  time  it  was  stale,  and  much  too 
late  from  the  newspaper  point  of  view.  Never- 
theless Maitland  did  occasionally  do  a  little  odd 
journalism,  for  I  remember  once,  before  I  went 
to  America,  being  with  him  when  he  received 
the  proofs  of  an  article  from  the  St.  James^  Ga- 
zette, and  picking  up  ^'Mark  Sumner"  one  may 
read:  ^'I  thought  of  this  as  I  sat  yesterday 
watching  a  noble  sunset,  which  brought  back  to 
my  memory  the  sunsets  of  a  London  autumn, 
thirty  years  ago.  It  happened  that,  on  one  such 
evening,  I  was  by  the  river  at  Chelsea,  with  noth- 
ing to  do  except  to  feel  that  I  was  hungry,  and 
to  reflect  that,  before  morning,  I  should  be 
hungrier  still.     I  loitered  upon  Battersea  Bridge 


I 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  75 

— the  old  picturesque  wooden  bridge,  and  there 
the  western  sky  took  hold  upon  me.  Half  an 
hour  later  I  was  speeding  home.  I  sat  down, 
and  wrote  a  description  of  what  I  had  seen,  and 
straightway  sent  it  to  an  evening  paper,  which, 
to  my  astonishment,  published  the  thing  next 
day — ^On  Battersea  Bridge.'  "  I  have  never 
seen  that  article  since  I  saw  the  proof  of  it,  but 
there  was  something  so  characteristic  in  it  that 
I  think  it  would  be  worth  some  one's  while  to 
hunt  up  the  files  of  the  St,  James'  Gazette  in 
order  to  find  it.  It  appears  that  while  he  was 
leaning  over  the  bridge,  enjoying  the  sunset, 
there  was  also  a  workman  looking  at  it.  The 
river  was  at  a  low  stage,  for  it  was  at  least  three- 
quarters-ebb,  and  on  each  side  of  the  river  there 
were  great  patches  of  shining  mud,  in  which  the 
glorious  western  sky  was  reflected,  turning  the 
ooze  into  a  mass  of  most  wonderful  colour. 
Maitland  said  to  me,  ^'Of  course  I  was  pleased 
to  see  somebody  else,  especially  a  poor  fellow 
like  that,  enjoying  the  beauty  of  the  sunset.  But 
presently  my  companion  edged  a  little  closer  to 
me,  and  seeing  my  eyes  directed  towards  the 
mud  which  showed  such  heavenly  colouring,  he 
remarked  to  me,  with  an  air  of  the  deepest  in- 
terest, Throws  up  an  'eap  of  mud,  don't  she?'  " 
Sometimes  when  Maitland  came  down  to  me 
in  Danvers  Street  he  used  to  go  over  my  ac- 


76  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE  \ 

counts  and  discuss  means  of  making  them  less.  : 
I  think  his  chief  joy  in  them  was  the  feeling  \ 
that  some  of  his  more  respectable  friends,  such  j 
as  Harold  Edgeworth,  would  have  been  horri-  | 
iied  at  my  peculiarly  squalid  existence.  In  a  | 
sense  it  was,  no  doubt,  squalid,  and  yet  in  another  \ 
it  was  perhaps  the  greatest  time  in  my  life,  and  ] 
Maitland  knew  it.  In  the  little  book  in  which  | 
I  kept  my  expenses  he  came  across  one  day  on  j 
which  I  had  absolutely  spent  nothing.  This  ■ 
was  a  great  joy  to  him.  On  another  day  he  j 
found  a  penny  put  down  as  ^'charity."  On  look-  \ 
ing  up  the  book  I  find  that  a  note  still  declares  ' 
that  this  penny  was  given  to  a  little  girl  to  pay  \ 
her  fare  in  the  bus.  I  remember  quite  well  that  '■ 
this  beneficence  on  my  part  necessitated  my  \ 
walking  all  the  way  to  Chelsea  from  Hyde  Park  j 
Corner.  Yet  Maitland  assured  me  that,  com-  \ 
pared  with  himself  at  times,  I  was  practically  a  | 
millionaire,  although  he  owned  that  he  had  very  j 
rarely  beaten  my  record  for  some  weeks  when  | 
all  expenditure  on  food  was  but  three-and-six- 
pence.  One  week  it  actually  totalled  no  more  , 
than  one-and-elevenpence,  but  I  have  no  doubt  i 
that  I  went  out  to  eat  with  somebody  else  on  j 
those  days — unless  it  was  at  the  time  my  liver  \ 
protested,  and  gave  me  such  an  attack  of  gloom  , 
that  I  went  to  bed  and  lay  there  for  three  days  j 
without  eating,   firmly  determined  to  die  and  : 


I 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  77 

have  done  with  the  literary  struggle.  This  fast 
did  me  a  great  deal  of  good.  On  the  fourth  day 
I  got  up  and  rustled  vigorously  for  a  meal,  and 
did  some  financing  with  the  admirable  result  of 
producing  a  whole  half-crown. 

Whenever  Maitland  came  to  me  I  cooked  his 
food  and  my  own  on  a  little  grid,  or  in  a  frying- 
pan,  over  the  fire  in  my  one  room.  This  fire 
cost  me  on  an  average  a  whole  shilling  a  week, 
or  perhaps  a  penny  or  two  more  if  the  coals, 
which  I  bought  in  the  street,  went  up  in  price. 
This  means  that  I  ran  a  fire  on  a  hundredweight 
of  coal  each  week,  or  sixteen  pounds  of  coal  a 
day.  Maitland,  who  was  an  expert  on  coal,  as- 
sured me  that  I  was  extremely  extravagant,  and 
that  a  fire  could  be  kept  going  for  much  less. 
On  trying,  I  found  out  that  when  I  was  exceed- 
ingly hard  up  I  could  keep  in  a  very  little  fire 
for  several  hours  a  day  on  only  eight  pounds 
of  coal,  but  sometimes  I  had  to  let  it  go  out,  and 
run  round  to  a  studio  to  get  warm  by  some 
artist's  stove, — provided  always  that  the  mer- 
chant in  coke  who  supplied  him  had  not  refused 
my  especial  friend  any  further  credit. 

At  this  time  Maitland  and  I  were  both  accus- 
tomed to  work  late,  although  he  was  just  then 
beginning  to  labour  at  more  reasonable  times, 
though  not  to  write  fewer  hours.  As  for  me,  I 
used  to  find  getting  up  in  the  morning  at  a 


78  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

proper  hour  quite  impossible.  Probably  this 
was  due  to  some  inherited  gout,  to  poisonous  in- 
digestion from  my  own  cooking,  or  to  a  contin- 
ued diet  of  desiccated  soups  and  ^'Jungle"  beef 
from  Chicago.  However,  it  seemed  to  Mait- 
land  that  I  was  quite  in  the  proper  tradition  of 
letters  while  I  was  working  on  a  long  novel, 
only  published  years  afterwards,  which  I  used 
to  begin  at  ten  or  eleven  o'clock  at  night,  fre- 
quently finishing  at  six  o'clock  in  the  morning 
when  the  sparrows  began  to  chirp  outside  my 
window. 

As  a  result  of  this  night-work  I  used  to  get  up 
at  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  sometimes  even 
later,  to  make  my  own  breakfast.  Afterwards 
I  would  go  out  to  see  some  of  my  friends  in  their 
studios,  and  at  the  time  most  people  were  think- 
ing of  going  to  bed  I  sat  down  to  the  wonder- 
fully morbid  piece  of  work  which  I  believed 
was  to  bring  me  fame.  This  was  a  rather  odd 
book,  called  'The  Fate  of  Hilary  Dale."  It 
has  no  claim  whatever  to  any  immortality,  and 
from  my  point  of  view  its  only  value  lies  in  the 
fact  that  there  is  a  very  brief  sketch  of  Maitland 
in  it.  He  is  described  in  these  words:  ^'Will 
Curgenven,  writer,  teacher,  and  general  apostle 
of  culture,  as  it  is  understood  by  the  elect,  had 
been  hard  at  work  for  some  hours  on  an  essay 
on  Greek  metres,  and  was  growing  tired  of  it. 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  79 

His  dingy  subject  and  dingy  Baker  Street  flat 
began  to  pall  on  him,  and  he  rose  to  pace  his  nar- 
row room."  Now  Will  Curgenven,  of  course, 
was  Maitland  and  the  dingy  Baker  Street  flat 
was  7  K.  ^^  ^Damn  the  nature  of  things,'  as  Por- 
son  said  when  he  swallowed  embrocation  instead 
of  whisky!"  was  what  I  went  on  to  put  into  his 
mouth.  This,  indeed,  was  one  of  Maitland's 
favourite  exclamations.  It  stood  with  him  for 
all  the  strange  and  blasphemous  and  eccentric 
oaths  with  which  I  then  decorated  my  language, 
the  result  of  my  experiences  in  the  back  blocks 
of  Australia  and  the  Pacific  Slope  of  America. 
In  this  book  I  went  on  to  make  a  little  fun  of  his 
great  joy  in  Greek  metres.  I  remember  that 
once  he  turned  to  me  with  an  assumed  air  of 
strange  amazement  and  exclaimed:  ^'Why,  my 
dear  fellow,  do  you  know  there  are  actually 
miserable  men  who  do  not  know — who  have 
never  even  heard  of — the  minuter  differences 
between  Dochmiacs  and  Antispasts!"  That, 
again,  reminds  me  of  a  passage  in  "Paternoster 
Row,"  which  always  gives  me  acute  pleasure 
because  it  recalls  Maitland  so  wonderfully.  It 
is  where  one  of  the  characters  came  in  to  the 
hero  and  wanted  his  opinion  on  the  scansion  of 
a  particular  chorus  in  the  "GEdipus  Rex." 
Maydon  laid  hold  of  the  book,  thought  a  bit, 
and  began  to  read  the  chorus  aloud.     Where- 


80  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

upon  the  other  one  cried:  ^'Choriambics,  eh? 
Possible,  of  course;  but  treat  them  as  Ionics  a 
minore  with  an  anacrusis,  and  see  if  they  don't 
go  better."  Now  in  this  passage  the  speaker  is 
really  Maitland,  for  he  involved  himself  in 
terms  of  pedantry  with  such  delight  that  his 
eyes  gleamed.  No  doubt  it  was  an  absurd 
thing,  but  Greek  metres  afforded  so  bright  a 
refuge  from  the  world  of  literary  struggle  and 
pressing  financial  difficulty. 

^'Damn  the  nature  of  things!"  was  Porson's 
oath.  Now  Maitland  had  a  very  peculiar  ad- 
miration for  Porson.  Porson  was  a  Grecian. 
He  loved  Greek.  That  was  sufficient  for  Mait- 
land. In  addition  to  that  claim  on  his  love,  it 
is  obvious  that  Porson  was  a  man  of  a  certain 
Rabelaisian  turn  of  mind,  and  that  again  was  a 
sufficient  passport  to  his  favour.  No  doubt  if 
Porson  had  invited  Maitland  to  his  rooms,  and 
had  then  got  wildly  drunk,  it  would  have  an- 
noyed Maitland  greatly;  but  the  picture  of  Por- 
son shouting  Greek  and  drinking  heavily  at- 
tracted him  immensely.  He  often  quoted  all 
the  little  stories  told  of  Porson,  such  as  the  very 
well-known  one  of  another  scholar  calling  on 
him  by  invitation  late  one  evening,  and  finding 
the  room  in  darkness  and  Porson  on  the  floor. 
This  was  when  his  visitor  called  out:  ^Torson, 
where  are  the  candles,  and  where's  the  whis- 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  81 

key?  "  and  Person  answered,  still  upon  the  floor, 
but  neither  forgetful  of  Greek  nor  of  his  native 
wit. 

When  any  man  of  our  acquaintance  was  alluded 
to  with  hostility,  or  if  one  animadverted  on  some 
popular  person  who  was  obviously  uneducated, 
Maitland  always  vowed  that  he  did  not  know 
Greek,  and  probably  or  certainly  had  never 
starved.  His  not  knowing  Greek  was,  of  course, 
a  very  great  offence  to  Maitland,  for  he  used  to 
quote  Porson  on  Hermann: 

"The  Germans  In  Greek 
Are  far  to  seek. 
Not  one  in  five  score, 
But  ninety-nine  more. 
All  save  only  Hermann, 
And  Hermann's  a  German.'* 

Of  course  a  man  who  lacked  Greek,  and  had  not 
starved,  was  anathema — not  to  be  considered. 
And  whatever  Porson  may  have  done  he  did 
know  Greek,  and  that  saved  his  soul.  Maitland 
often  quoted  very  joyfully  what  he  declared  to 
be  some  of  the  most  charming  lines  in  the 
English  language: 

"I  went  to  Strasburg,  and  there  got  drunk 
With  the  most  learned  Professor  Runck. 
I  went  to  Wortz,  and  got  more  drunken 
With  the  more  learned  Professor  Runcken." 


82  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

But  if  the  spirit  was  willing,  the  flesh  was  weak. 
I  never  saw  Maitland  drunk  in  his  life.  Indeed 
he  was  no  real  expert  in  drinking.  He  had 
never  had  any  education  in  the  wines  he  loved. 
Any  amateur  of  the  product  of  the  vine  will 
know  how  to  estimate  his  actual  qualifications 
as  a  judge,  when  I  say  that  Asti,  Capri,  and  es- 
pecially Chianti  seemed  to  him  the  greatest 
wines  in  the  world,  since  by  no  means  could  he 
obtain  the  right  Falernian  of  Horace,  which,  by 
the  way,  was  probably  a  most  atrocious  vintage. 
As  it  happened  I  had  been  employed  for  many 
months  on  a  great  vineyard  in  California,  and 
there  had  learnt  not  a  little  about  the  making 
and  blending  of  wine.  Added  to  this  I  had 
some  natural  taste  in  it,  and  had  read  a  great 
deal  about  wine-making  and  the  great  vintages 
of  France  and  Germany.  One  could  always  in- 
terest Maitland  by  telling  him  something  about 
wine,  provided  one  missed  out  the  scientific  side 
of  it.  But  it  was  sad  that  I  lacked,  from  his 
point  of  view,  the  proper  enthusiasm  for 
Chianti.  Yet,  indeed,  one  knows  what  was  in 
his  classic  mind,  from  the  fact  that  a  poor  vin- 
tage in  a  real  Italian  flask,  or  in  something 
shaped  like  an  amphora,  would  have  made  him 
chuckle  with  joy  far  more  readily  than  if  a  rich 
man  had  offered  him  in  a  bottle  some  glorious 
first  growth  of  the  Medoc,  Lafiitte,  Latour,  or 


I 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  83 

Haut-Brion.  But,  indeed,  he  and  I,  even  when 
I  refused  indignantly  to  touch  the  Italians,  and 
declared  with  resolution  for  a  wine  of  Burgundy 
or  the  Medoc,  rarely  got  beyond  a  Bourgeois 
vintage. 

Nevertheless  though  I  aspired  to  be  his  tutor 
in  wines  I  owed  him  more  than  is  possible  to  say 
in  the  greater  matters  of  education.  My  debt 
to  him  is  really  very  big.  It  was,  naturally 
enough,  through  his  influence,  that  while  I  was 
still  in  my  one  room  in  Danvers  Street  I  com- 
menced to  read  again  all  the  Greek  tragedies. 
By  an  odd  chance  I  came  across  a  clergyman's 
son  in  Chelsea  who  also  had  a  certain  passion  for 
Greek.  He  used  to  come  to  my  room  and  there 
we  re-read  the  tragedies.  Oddly  enough  I  think 
my  new  friend  never  met  Maitland,  for  Mait- 
land  rarely  came  to  my  room  save  on  Sundays, 
and  those  days  I  reserved  specially  for  him. 
But  whenever  we  met,  either  there  or  at  7  K,  we 
always  read  or  recited  Greek  to  each  other,  and 
then  entered  into  a  discussion  of  the  metrical 
value  of  the  choruses — in  which  branch  of  learn- 
ing I  trust  I  showed  proper  humility,  for  in 
prosody  he  was  remarkably  learned.  As  for  me, 
I  knew  nothing  of  it  beyond  what  he  told  me, 
and  cared  very  little,  personally,  for  the  techni- 
cal side  of  poetry.  Nevertheless  it  was  not  easy 
to  resist  Maitland's  enthusiasm,  and  I  succumbed 


84  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

to  it  so  greatly  that  I  at  last  imagined  that  I  was 
really  interested  in  what  appealed  so  to  him. 
Heaven  knows,  in  those  days  I  did  at  least  learn 
something  of  the  matter. 

We  talked  of  rhythm,  and  of  Arsis  or  Ictus. 
Pyrrhics  we  spoke  of,  and  trochees  and  spondees 
were  familiar  on  our  lips.  Especially  did  he 
declare  that  he  had  a  passion  for  anapaests,  and 
when  it  came  to  the  actual  metres,  Choriambics 
and  Galliambics  were  an  infinite  joy  to  him. 
He  explained  to  me  most  seriously  the  dififerences 
between  trimeter  Iambics  when  they  were  cata- 
lectic,  acatalectic,  hypercatalectic.  What  he 
knew  about  comic  tetrameter  was  at  my  service, 
and  in  a  short  time  I  knew,  as  I  imagined,  almost 
all  that  he  did  about  Minor  Ionic,  Sapphic,  and 
Alcaic  verse.  Once  more  these  things  are  to  me 
little  more  than  words,  and  yet  I  never  hear  one 
of  them  mentioned — as  one  does  occasionally 
when  one  comes  across  a  characteristic  enthusiast 
— but  I  think  of  Henry  Maitland  and  his  gravely 
joyous  lectures  to  me  on  that  vastly  important 
subject.  No  doubt  many  people  will  think  that 
such  little  details  as  these  are  worth  nothing, 
but  I  shall  have  failed  greatly  in  putting  Mait- 
land down  if  they  do  not  seem  something  in  the 
end.  These  trifles  are,  after  all,  touches  in  the 
portrait  as  I  see  the  man,  and  that  they  all  meant 
much  to  him  I  know  very  well.     To  get  through 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  85 

the  early  days  of  literary  poverty  one  must  have 
ambition  and  enthusiasm  of  many  kinds.  En- 
thusiasm alone  is  nothing,  and  ambition  by  itself 
is  too  often  barren,  but  the  two  together  are  some- 
thing that  the  gods  may  fight  against  in  vain.  I 
know  that  this  association  with  him,  when  I  was 
his  only  friend,  and  he  was  my  chief  friend,  was 
great  for  both  of  us,  for  he  had  much  to  endure, 
and  I  was  not  without  my  troubles.  Yet  we 
made  fun  together  of  our  squalor,  and  rejoiced 
in  our  poverty,  so  long  as  it  did  not  mean  acute 
suffering;  and  when  it  did  mean  that,  we  often- 
times got  something  out  of  literature  to  help  us 
to  forget.  On  looking  back,  I  know  that  many 
things  happened  which  seem  to  me  dreadful,  but 
then  they  appeared  but  part  of  the  day's  work. 
It  rarely  happened  that  I  went  to  him  without 
some  story  of  the  week's  happenings,  to  be  told 
again  in  return  something  which  had  occurred  to 
him.  For  instance,  there  was  that  story  of  the 
lady  who  asked  him  his  experience  with  regard 
to  the  management  of  butlers.  In  return  I  could 
tell  him  of  going  out  to  dinner  at  houses  where 
people  would  have  been  horrified  to  learn  that  I 
had  eaten  nothing  that  day,  and  possibly  nothing 
the  day  before.  For  us  to  consort  with  the  com- 
fortably situated  sometimes  seemed  to  both  of  us 
an  intolerably  fine  jest,  which  was  added  to  by 
the  difference  of  these  comfortable  people  from 


86  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

the  others  we  knew.  Here  and  there  we  came 
across  some  fatly  rich  person  who,  by  accident, 
had  once  been  deprived  of  his  usual  dinner.  It 
seemed  to  give  him  a  sympathetic  feeling  for  the 
very  poor.  But,  after  all,  though  I  did  some- 
times associate  with  such  people,  I  was  happier 
in  my  own  room  with  Maitland,  or  in  his  flat, 
where  we  discussed  our  i^schylus,  or  wrought 
upon  metres  or  figures  of  speech — always  a  great 
joy  to  us.  Upon  these,  too,  Maitland  was  really 
quite  learned.  He  was  full  of  examples  of 
brachyology.  Anacoluthon  he  was  well  ac- 
quainted with.  Not  even  Farrar,  in  his  ''Greek 
Syntax,"  or  some  greater  man,  knew  more  ex- 
amples of  chiasmus,  asyndeton,  or  hendiadys. 
In  these  byways  he  generally  rejoiced,  and  we 
were  never  satisfied  unless  at  each  meeting, 
wherever  it  might  be,  we  discovered  some  new 
phrase,  or  new  word,  or  new  quotation. 

Once  at  7  K  I  quoted  to  him  from  Keats' 
"Endymion"  the  lines  about  those  people  who 
"unpen  their  baaing  vanities  to  browse  away  the 
green  and  comfortable  juicy  hay  of  human 
pastures."  All  that  evening  he  was  denouncing 
various  comfortable  people  who  fed  their  baaing 
vanity  on  everything  delightful.  He  declared 
they  browsed  away  all  that  made  life  worth 
while,  and  in  return  for  my  gift  to  him  of  this 
noble  quotation  he  produced  something  rather 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  87 

more  astounding,  and  perhaps  not  quite  so  quot- 
able, out  of  Zola's  ''Nana."  We  had  been  talk- 
ing of  realism,  and  of  speaking  the  truth,  of 
being  direct,  of  not  being  mealy-mouthed;  in 
fact,  of  not  letting  loose  ''baaing  vanities,"  and 
suddenly  he  took  down  "Nana"  and  said,  "Here 
Zola  has  put  a  phrase  in  her  mouth  which  re- 
joices me  exceedingly.  It  is  a  plain,  straight- 
forw^ard,  absolutely  characteristic  sentiment, 
such  as  we  in  England  are  not  allowed  to  repre- 
sent. Nana,  on  being  remonstrated  with  by  her 
lover-in-chief  for  her  infidelities,  returns  him  the 
plain  and  direct  reply,  'Quand  je  vois  un  homme 
qui  me  plait,  je  couche  avec'  "  He  went  on  to 
declare  that  writing  any  novels  in  England  was 
indeed  a  very  sickening  business,  but  he  added, 
"I  really  think  we  begin  to  get  somewhat  better 
in  this.  However,  up  to  the  last  few  years,  it 
has  been  practically  impossible  to  write  anything 
more  abnormal  about  a  man's  relations  with 
women  than  a  mere  bigamy."  Things  have  cer- 
tainly altered,  but  I  think  he  was  one  of  those 
who  helped  to  break  down  that  undue  sense  of 
the  value  of  current  morality  w^hich  has  done  so 
much  harm  to  the  study  of  life  in  general,  and 
indeed  to  life  itself.  His  general  rage  and  quar- 
rel with  that  current  morality,  for  which  he  had 
not  only  a  contempt,  but  a  loathing  which  often 
made  him  speechless,  comes  out  well  in  what  he 


88  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

thought  and  expressed  about  the  Harold  Fred- 
erick affair.  There  was,  of  course,  as  everybody 
knows,  a  second  illegitimate  family.  While 
the  good  and  orthodox  made  a  certain  amount 
of  effort  to  help  the  wife  and  the  legal  children, 
they  did  their  very  best  to  ignore  the  second 
family.  However,  to  Maitland's  great  joy,  there 
were  certain  people,  notably  Mrs.  Stephens,  who 
did  their  very  best  for  the  other  children  and  for 
the  poor  mother.  Maitland  himself  subscribed, 
before  he  knew  the  actual  position,  to  both  fam- 
ilies, and  betrayed  extraordinary  rage  when  he 
learnt  how  that  second  family  had  been  treated, 
and  heard  of  the  endeavours  of  the  ^'unco'  guid" 
to  ignore  them  wholly.  But  then  such  actions 
and  such  hypocrisy  are  characteristic  of  the  mid- 
dle class  in  this  country  and  not  in  this  country 
alone.  He  loathed  their  morals  which  became 
a  system  of  cruelty;  their  greed  and  its  concom- 
itant selfishness:  their  timidity  which  grows 
brutal  in  defence  of  a  position  to  which  only 
chance  and  their  rapacity  have  entitled  them. 

Apropos  of  his  hatred  of  current  morality,  it  is 
a  curious  thing  that  the  only  quarrel  I  ever  had 
with  him  showed  his  early  point  of  view  rather 
oddly.  Among  the  few  men  he  knew  there  was 
one,  with  whom  I  was  a  little  acquainted,  who 
had  picked  up  a  young  girl  in  a  tavern  and  taken 
her  to  live  with  him.     My  own  acquaintance 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  89 

with  her  led  to  some  jealousy  between  me  and 
the  man  who  was  keeping  her,  and  he  wrote  to 
Maitland  complaining  of  me,  and  telling  him 
many  things  which  were  certainly  untrue. 
Maitland  when  he  considered  the  fact  of  his 
having  ruined  his  own  life  for  ever  and  ever  by 
his  relations  with  a  woman  of  this  order,  had 
naturally  built  up  a  kind  of  theory  of  these  things 
as  a  justification  for  himself.  This  may  seem  a 
piece  of  extravagant  psychology,  but  I  have  not 
-the  least  doubt  that  it  is  true.  Without  asking 
my  view  of  the  affair  he  wrote  to  me  very  an- 
grily, and  declared  that  I  had  behaved  badly. 
He  added  that  he  wished  me  to  understand  that 
he  considered  an  affair  of  that  description  as 
sacred  as  any  marriage.  Though  he  was  young, 
and  in  these  matters  no  little  of  a  prig,  I  was 
also  young,  and  of  a  hot  temper.  That  he  had 
not  made  any  inquiries  of  me,  or  even  asked  my 
version  of  the  circumstances,  so  angered  me  that 
I  wrote  back  to  him  saying  that  if  he  spoke  to 
me  in  that  way  I  should  decline  to  have  any- 
thing more  to  do  with  him.  As  he  was  con- 
vinced, most  unjustly,  that  his  view  was  entirely 
sound,  this  naturally  enough  led  to  an  estrange- 
ment which  lasted  for  the  best  part  of  a  year, 
but  I  am  glad  to  remember  that  I  myself  made 
it  up  by  writing  to  him  about  one  of  his  books. 
This  was  before  I  went  to  America,  and  al- 


90  HENRY  MAITLAND 

though  I  was  working,  it  was  a  great  grief  to  me 
that  we  did  not  meet  during  this  estrangement 
for  any  of  our  great  talks,  which,  both  then  and 
afterwards,  were  part  of  my  life,  and  no  little 
part  of  it.  Often  when  I  think  of  him  I  recol- 
lect those  lines  of  Callimachus  to  Heracleitus 
in  Corey's  ^'lonica": 

"They  told  me,  Heracleitus,  they  told  me  you  were  dead ; 
They  brought  me  bitter  news  to  hear  and  bitter  tears  to 

shed. 
I  wept  as  I  remembered  how  often  you  and  I 
Had  tired  the  sun  with  talking,  and  sent  him  down  the 
sky." 


CHAPTER  IV 

IN  the  last  chapter  I  quoted  from  Boswell, 
always  a  favourite  of  Maitland's,  as  he  is 
of  all  true  men  of  letters.  But  there  is  yet 
another  quotation  from  the  same  work  which 
might  stand  as  a  motto  for  this  book,  as  it  might 
for  the  final  and  authoritative  biography  of 
Maitland  which  perhaps  will  some  day  be  done: 
^'He  asked  me  whether  he  had  mentioned,  in  any 
of  the  papers  of  the  ^Rambler,'  the  description 
in  Virgil  of  the  entrance  into  Hell,  with  an  ap- 
plication to  the  Press;  ^for,'  said  he,  'I  do  not 
much  remember  them.'  I  told  him,  ^No.' 
Upon  which  he  repeated  it: 

'Vestibulum  ante  ipsum  primisque  in  faucibus  Orel, 
Lucius  et  ultrices  posuere  cubilia  Curce; 
Pallentesque  habitant  Morbi,  tristisque  Senectus, 
Et  MetuSj  et  malesuada  Fames,  ac  turpis  Egestas; 
Terribiles  vis  forma:  Letumque,  Labosque/ 

*Now,'  said  he,  ^almost  all  these  apply  exactly 
to  an  author;  all  these  are  the  concomitants  of 
a  printing-house.' "  Nevertheless,  although 
cares,  and  sometimes  sullen  sorrows,  want  and 
fear,  still  dwelt  with  Maitland,  a  little  time  now 

91 


92  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

began  for  him  in  which  he  had  some  peace  of 
mind,  if  not  happiness.  That  was  a  plant  he 
never  cultivated.  One  of  his  favourite  passages 
from  Charlotte  Bronte,  whose  work  was  in  many 
ways  a  passion  to  him,  is  that  in  which  she  ex- 
claims: "Cultivate  happiness!  Happiness  is 
not  a  potato,"  and  indeed  he  never  grew  it.  Still 
there  were  two  periods  in  his  life  in  which  he 
had  some  peace,  and  the  first  period  now  began. 
I  speak  of  the  time  after  the  death  of  his  first 
wife.  The  drain  of  ten  shillings  a  week — which 
must  seem  so  absurdly  little  to  many — had  been 
far  more  than  he  could  stand,  and  many  times  he 
had  gone  without  the  merest  necessities  of  life 
so  that  the  poor  alien  in  the  New  Cut  should 
have  money,  even  though  he  knew  that  she 
spent  it  at  once  upon  drink  and  forgetfulness. 
Ten  shillings  a  week  was  very  much  to  him. 
For  one  thing  it  might  mean  a  little  more  food 
and  better  food.  It  meant  following  up  his  one 
great  hobby  of  buying  books.  Those  who  know 
"The  Meditations,"  know  what  he  thought  of 
books,  for  in  that  respect  this  record  is  a  true 
guide,  even  if  it  should  be  read  with  caution  in 
most  things.  Nevertheless  although  he  was  hap- 
pier and  easier,  it  is  curious  that  his  most  un- 
happy and  despairing  books  were  written  during 
this  particular  period.  "In  the  Morning,"  it 
is  true,  was  done  before  his  wife  died,  and  some 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  93 

people  who  do  not  know  the  inner  history  of  the 
book  may  not  regard  it  as  a  tragedy.  In  one 
sense,  however,  it  was  one  of  the  greatest  literary 
tragedies  of  Henry  Maitland's  life,  according 
to  his  own  statement  to  me. 

At  that  time  he  was  publishing  books  with  the 
firm  of  Miller  and  Company,  and,  of  course,  he 
knew  John  Glass,  who  read  for  them,  very  well 
indeed.  It  seems  that  Glass,  who  had  naturally 
enough,  considering  his  period,  certain  old- 
fashioned  ideas  on  the  subject  of  books  and  their 
endings,  absolutely  and  flatly  declined  to  rec- 
ommend his  firm  to  publish  ^'In  the  Morning," 
unless  Maitland  re-wrote  the  natural  tragic  end 
of  the  book  and  made  it  turn  out  happily.  I 
think  nothing  on  earth,  or  in  some  hell  for  men 
of  letters,  could  have  made  Maitland  more  angry 
and  wretched.  If  there  was  one  thing  that  he 
clung  to  during  the  whole  of  his  working  time,  it 
was  sincerity,  and  sincerity  in  literary  work  im- 
plies an  absolute  freedom  from  alien  and  ex- 
trinsic influence.  I  can  well  remember  what  he 
said  to  me  about  Glass'  suggestion.  He  abused 
him  and  the  publishers;  the  public,  England, 
the  world,  and  the  very  universe.  He  almost 
burst  into  tears  as  he  explained  to  me  what  he 
had  been  obliged  to  do  for  the  sake  of  the  great 
fifty  pounds  he  was  to  get  for  the  book.  For 
at  this  time  he  only  got  fifty  pounds  for  a  long 


94  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

three-volume  novel.  He  always  wrote  with  the 
greatest  pain  and  labour,  but  I  do  not  suppose 
he  ever  put  anything  on  paper  in  his  life  which 
cost  him  such  acute  mental  suffering  as  the  last 
three  chapters  of  this  book  which  w^ere  written 
to  John  Glass'  barbaric  order. 

After  his  wife's  death  he  wrote  'The  Under- 
World,"  ''Bond  and  Free,"  "Paternoster  Row," 
and  "The  Exile."  It  is  a  curious  fact,  although 
it  was  not  always  obvious  even  to  himself,  and 
is  not  now  obvious  to  anybody  but  me,  that  I 
stood  as  a  model  to  him  in  many  of  these  books, 
especially,  if  I  remember  rightly,  for  one  par- 
ticular character  in  "Bond  and  Free."  Some  of 
these  sketches  are  fairly  complimentary,  and 
many  are  much  the  reverse.  The  reason  of  this 
use  of  me  was  that  till  much  later  he  knew  very 
few  men  intimately  but  myself;  and  when  he 
wanted  anybody  in  his  books  of  a  more  or  less 
robust  character,  and  sometimes  more  or  less  of  a 
kind  that  he  did  not  like,  I,  perforce,  had  to  stand 
for  him.  On  one  occasion  he  acknowledged 
this  to  me,  and  once  he  was  not  at  all  sure  how 
I  should  take  it.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  most 
life-like  portrait  of  me  ends  as  a  villain,  and,  as 
he  had  touched  me  ofif  to  the  very  life  in  the  first 
volume,  it  did  make  me  a  little  sorer  than  I 
acknowledged.  I  leave  the  curious  to  discover 
this  particular  scoundrel.     Of  course  it  was  only 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  95 

natural  that  my  wild  habits  and  customs,  the 
relics  of  Australia  and  America,  afforded  him 
a  great  deal  of  amusement  and  study.  On  one 
occasion  they  cost  him,  temporarily,  the  very 
large  sum  of  three  pounds.  As  he  said,  he  used 
to  look  upon  me  as  a  kind  of  hybrid,  a  very 
ridiculous  wild  man  with  strong  literary  lean- 
ings, with  an  enormous  amount  of  general  and 
unrelated  knowledge;  and  at  the  same  time  as  a 
totally  unregulated  or  ill-regulated  ruffian. 
This  was  a  favourite  epithet  of  his,  for  which  I 
daresay  there  was  something  to  be  said.  Now 
one  Sunday  it  happened  that  I  was  going  up  to 
see  him  at  7  K,  and  came  from  Chelsea  with 
two  or  three  books  in  my  hand,  and,  as  it  hap- 
pened, a  pair  of  spectacles  on  my  nose.  At  that 
time  I  sometimes  carried  an  umbrella,  and  no 
doubt  looked  exceedingly  peaceful.  As  a  re- 
sult of  this  a  young  man,  who  turned  out  after- 
wards to  be  a  professional  cricketer,  thought  I 
was  a  very  easy  person  to  deal  with,  and  to  in- 
sult. As  I  came  to  York  Place,  which  was  then 
almost  empty  of  passers  by,  I  was  walking  close 
to  the  railings  and  this  individual  came  up  and 
pushing  rudely  past  me,  stepped  right  in  front 
of  me.  Now  this  was  a  most  outrageous  pro- 
ceeding, because  he  had  fifteen  free  feet  of  pave- 
ment, and  I  naturally  resented  it.  I  made  a 
little  longer  step  than  I  should  otherwise  have 


96  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

done  and  "galled  his  kibe."  He  turned  round 
upon  me  and,  using  very  bad  language,  asked 
me  where  I  was  going  to,  who  I  thought  I  was, 
and  what  I  proposed  to  do  about  it.  I  did  not 
propose  to  do  anything,  but  did  it.  I  smote 
him  very  hard  with  the  umbrella,  knocking  him 
down.  He  remained  on  the  pavement  for  a 
considerable  time,  and  then  only  got  up  at  the 
third  endeavour,  and  promptly  gave  me  into 
custody.  The  policeman,  who  had  happened 
to  see  the  whole  affair,  explained  to  me,  with 
that  civility  common  among  the  custodians  of 
order  to  those  classes  whose  dress  suggests  they 
are  their  masters,  that  he  was  compelled  to  take 
the  charge.  I  was  removed  to  Lower  Seymour 
Street  and  put  in  a  cell  for  male  prisoners  only, 
where  I  remained  fully  half  an  hour. 

While  I  was  in  this  cell  a  small  boy  of  about 
nine  was  introduced  and  left  there.  I  went 
over  to  him  and  said,  "Hullo,  my  son,  what's 
brought  you  here?"  Naturally  enough  he  im- 
agined that  I  was  not  a  prisoner  but  a  powerful 
official,  and  bursting  into  tears  he  said,  "Oh, 
please,  sir,  it  warn't  me  as  nicked  the  steak!" 
I  consoled  him  to  the  best  of  my  ability  until  I 
was  shortly  afterwards  invited  down  to  Marl- 
borough Street  Police  Court,  where  Mr.  De 
Rutzen,  now  Sir  Albert  De  Rutzen,  was  sitting. 
As  I  had  anticipated  the  likelihood  of  my  being 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  97 

fined,  and  as  I  had  no  more  than  a  few  shillings 
with  me,  I  had  written  a  letter  to  Maitland,  and 
procuring  a  messenger  through  the  police,  had 
sent  it  up  to  him.  He  came  down  promptly 
and  sat  in  the  court  while  I  was  being  tried  for 
this  assault.  After  hearing  the  case  Mr.  De 
Rutzen  decided  to  fine  me  three  pounds,  which 
Maitland  paid,  with  great  chuckles  at  the  inci- 
dent, even  though  he  considered  his  prospect  of 
getting  the  money  back  for  some  months  was 
exceedingly  vague.  It  was  by  no  means  the 
first  time  that  he  had  gone  to  the  police  court 
for  copy  which  '4s  very  pretty  to  observe,"  as 
Pepys  said,  when  after  the  Fire  of  London  it 
was  discovered  that  as  many  churches  as  public 
houses  were  left  standing  in  the  city.  That 
such  a  man  should  have  had  to  pursue  his  studies 
of  actual  life  in  the  police  courts  and  the  slums 
was  really  an  outrage,  another  example  of  the 
native  malignity  of  matter.  For,  as  I  have  in- 
sisted, and  must  insist  again,  he  was  a  scholar 
and  a  dreamer.  But  his  pressing  anxieties  for 
ever  forbade  him  to  dream,  or  to  pursue  scholar- 
ship without  interruption.  He  desired  time  to 
perfect  his  control  of  the  English  tongue,  and 
he  wanted  much  that  no  man  can  ever  get.  It 
is  my  firm  conviction  that  if  he  had  possessed 
the  smallest  means  he  would  never  have  thought 
himself  completely  master  of  the  medium  in 


98  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

which  he  worked.  He  often  spoke  of  poor 
Flaubert  saying:  "What  an  accursed  language 
is  French!"  He  was  for  ever  dissatisfied  with 
his  work,  as  an  artist  should  be,  and  I  think  he 
attained  seldom,  if  ever,  the  rare  and  infrequent 
joy  that  an  artist  has  in  accomplishment.  It 
was  not  only  his  desire  of  infinite  perfection  as  a 
writer  pure  and  simple,  which  affected  and  af- 
flicted him.  It  was  the  fact  that  he  should  never 
have  written  fiction  at  all.  He  often  destroyed 
the  first  third  of  a  book.  I  knew  him  to  do  so 
with  one  three  times  over.  This,  of  course,  was 
not  always  out  of  the  cool  persuasion  that  what 
he  had  done  was  not  good,  for  it  often  was  good 
in  its  way,  but  frequently  he  began,  in  a  hurry, 
in  despair,  and  with  the  prospects  of  starvation, 
something  that  he  knew  not  to  be  his  own  true 
work,  or  something  which  he  forced  without 
adequate  preparation.  Then  I  used  to  get  a 
dark  note  saying,  'T  have  destroyed  the  whole  of 
the  first  volume  and  am,  I  hope,  beginning  to 
see  my  way."  It  was  no  pleasant  thing  to  be  a 
helpless  spectator  of  these  struggles,  in  which 
he  found  no  rest,  when  I  knew  his  destiny  was 
to  have  been  a  scholar  at  a  great  university. 

When  one  understands  his  character,  or  even 
begins  to  understand  it,  it  is  easy  enough  to  com- 
prehend that  the  temporary  ease  with  regard  to 
money  which  came  after  his  wife's  death  did  not 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  99 

last  so  very  long.  The  pressure  of  her  immedi- 
ate needs  and  incessant  demands  being  at  last 
relaxed  he  himself  relaxed  his  efforts  in  certain 
directions  and  presently  was  again  in  difficulties. 
I  know  that  it  will  sound  very  extraordinary  to 
all  but  those  who  know  the  inside  of  literary  life 
that  this  should  have  been  so.  A  certain  amount 
of  publicity  is  almost  always  associated  in  the 
minds  of  the  public  with  monetary  success  of  a 
kind.  Yet  one  very  well-known  acquaintance 
of  mine,  an  eminent  if  erratic  journalist,  one  day 
had  a  column  of  favourable  criticism  in  a  big 
daily,  and  after  reading  it  went  out  and  bought 
a  red  herring  with  his  last  penny  and  cooked  it 
over  the  fire  in  his  solitary  room.  It  was  the 
same  with  myself.  It  was  almost  the  same  with 
Maitland  even  at  this  time.  No  doubt  the 
worst  of  his  financial  difficulties  were  before  I 
returned  from  America,  and  even  before  his  wife 
died,  but  never,  till  the  end  of  his  life,  was  he  at 
ease  with  regard  to  money.  He  never  attained 
the  art  of  the  pot-boiler  by  which  most  of  us 
survive,  even  when  he  tried  short  stories,  which 
he  did  finally  after  I  had  pressed  him  to  attempt 
them  for  some  years. 

In  many  ways  writing  to  him  was  a  kind  of 
sacred  mission.  It  was  not  that  he  had  any 
faith  in  great  results  to  come  from  it,  but  the 
profession  of  a  writer  was  itself  sacred,  and  even 


100  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

the  poorest  sincere  writer  was  a  sacer  vates.  He 
once  absolutely  came  down  all  the  way  to  me  in 
Chelsea  to  show  me  a  well-known  article  in 
which  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  denied,  to  my 
mind  not  so  unjustly,  that  a  writer  could  claim 
payment  at  all,  seeing  that  he  left  the  world's 
work  to  do  what  he  chose  to  do  for  his  own  pleas- 
ure. Stevenson  went  on  to  compare  such  a 
writer  to  a  fille  de  joie.  This  enraged  Maitland 
furiously.  I  should  have  been  grieved  if  he  and 
Stevenson  had  met  upon  that  occasion.  I  really 
think  something  desperate  might  have  happened, 
little  as  one  might  expect  violence  from  such  a 
curious  apostle  of  personal  peace  as  Maitland. 
Many  years  afterwards  I  related  this  little  inci- 
dent to  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  in  Samoa,  but  I 
think  by  that  time  Maitland  himself  was  half 
inclined  to  agree  with  his  eminent  brother  au- 
thor. And  yet,  as  I  say,  writing  was  a  mission, 
even  if  it  was  with  him  an  acquired  passion ;  but 
his  critical  faculties,  which  were  so  keenly  de- 
veloped, almost  destroyed  him.  There  can  be 
no  stronger  proof  that  he  was  not  one  of  those 
happy  beings  who  take  to  the  telling  of  stories 
because  they  must,  and  because  it  is  in  them. 
There  was  no  time  that  he  was  not  obliged  to  do 
his  best,  though  every  writer  knows  to  his  grief 
that  there  are  times  when  the  second  best  must 
do.     And  thus  it  was  that  John  Glass  so  enraged 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  101' 

him.     All  those  things  which  are  the  care  of  the 
true  writer  were  of  most  infinite  importance  to 
him.     A  misprint,  a  mere  ^'literal/'  gave  him 
lasting    pain.     He    desired    classic    perfection, 
both  of  work  and  the  mere  methods  of  produc- 
tion.    He  would  have  taken  years  over  a  book 
if  fear  and  hunger  and  poverty  had  permitted 
him  to  do  so.     And  yet  he  wrote  "Isabel,"  ''The 
Mob,"    and   ''In   the   Morning,"    all   in   seven 
months,  even  while  he  read  through  the  whole 
of  Dante's  "Divina  Commedia,"  for  recreation, 
and  while  he  toiled  at  the  alien  labour  of  teach- 
ing.    Yet  this  was  he  who  wrote  to  one  friend: 
I  "Would  it  not  be  delightful  to  give  up  a  year  or 
so  to  the  study  of  some  old  period  of  English  his- 
tory?"    When  he  was  thirty-six  he  said:     "The 
four  years  from  now  to  forty  I  should  like  to 
devote  to  a  vigorous  apprenticeship  in  English." 
But  this  was  the  man  who  year  after  year  was 
compelled  to  write  books  which  the  very  essence 
of  his  being  told  him  would  work  no   good. 
Sometimes  I  am  tempted  to  think  that  the  only 
relief  he  got  for  many,  many  years  came  out  of 
the  hours  we  spent  in  company,  either  in  his 
room  or  mine.     We  read  very  much  together, 
and  it  was  our  delight,  as  I  have  said,  to  ex- 
change quotations,  or  read  each  other  passages 
which  we  had  discovered  during  the  week.     He 
recited  poetry  with  very  great  feeling  and  skill, 


I 


102  TRE  PRIVATE  LIFE  j 

I 
and  was  especially  fond  of  much  of  Coleridge. 

I  can  hear  him  now  reading  those  lines  of  Cole-   : 

ridge  to  his  son  which  end :  I 

''Therefore  all  seasons  shall  be  sweet  to  thee  j 

Whether  the  summer  clothe  the  general  earth 
With  greenness,  or  the  redbreast  sit  and  sing 
Betwixt  the  tufts  of  snow  on  the  bare  branch 
Of  mossy  apple-tree,  while  the  nigh  thatch 
Smokes  in  the  sun-thaw;  whether  the  eave-drops  fall 
Heard  only  in  the  trances  of  the  blast. 
Or  if  the  secret  ministry  of  frost 
Shall  hang  them  up  in  silent  icicles, 
Quietly  shining  to  the  quiet  Moon." 

And  to  hear  him  chant  the  mighty  verse  of  the  \ 
great  Greeks  who  were  dead,  and  yet  were  most  j 
alive  to  him,  was  always  inspiring.  The  time  i 
was  to  come,  though  not  yet,  when  he  was  to  see 
Greece,  and  when  h^  had  entered  Piraeus  and 
seen  the  peopled  mountains  of  that  country 
Homer  became  something  more  to  him  than  he 
had  been,  and  the  language  of  ^schylus  and 
Sophocles  took  on  new  glories  and  clothed  itself 
in  still  more  wondrous  emotions.  He  knew  a 
hundred  choruses  of  the  Greek  tragedies  by 
heart,  and  declaimed  them  with  his  wild  hair 
flung  back  and  his  eyes  gleaming  as  if  the  old 
tragedians,  standing  in  the  glowing  sun  of  the 
Grecian  summer,  were  there  to  hear  him,  an  alien 
yet  not  an  alien,  using  the  tongue  that  gave  its 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  103 

chiefest  glories  to  them  for  ever.  But  he  had 
been  born  in  exile,  and  had  made  himself  an 
outcast. 

Those  who  have  read  so  far,  and  are  interested 
in  him,  will  see  that  I  am  much  more  concerned 
to  say  what  I  felt  about  him  than  to  relate  mere 
facts  and  dates.  I  care  little  or  nothing  that  in 
some  ways  others  know  more  or  less  of  him,  or 
know  it  differently.  I  try  to  build  up  my  little 
model  of  him,  try  to  paint  my  picture  touch  by 
touch;  often,  it  may  be,  by  repetition,  for  so  a 
man  builds  himself  for  his  friends  in  his  life.  I 
must  paint  him  as  a  whole,  and  put  him  down, 
here  and  there  perhaps  with  the  grain  of  the 
canvas  showing  through  the  paint,  or  perhaps 
with  what  the  worthy  critics  call  a  rich  impasto, 
which  may  be  compiled  of  words.  Others  may 
criticise,  and  will  criticise,  what  I  write.  No 
doubt  they  will  find  much  of  it  wrong,  or  wrong- 
headed,  and  will  attribute  to  me  other  motives 
than  those  which  move  me,  but  if  it  leads  them 
to  bring  out  more  of  his  character  than  I  know 
or  remember,  I  shall  be  content.  For  the  more 
that  is  known  of  him,  the  more  he  will  be  loved. 

It  was  somewhere  about  this  time  that  I  un- 
dertook to  write  one  of  two  or  three  articles 
which  I  have  done  about  him  for  periodicals, 
and  the  remembrance  of  that  particular  piece  of 
work  reminds  me  very  strongly  of  his  own  ideas 


104  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

of  his  own  humour  in  writing.  There  have 
been  many  discussions,  wise  and  otherwise,  as 
to  whether  he  possessed  any  at  all,  and  I  think 
the  general  feeling  that  he  was  very  greatly  lack- 
ing in  this  essential  part  of  the  equipment  of  a 
writer,  to  be  on  the  whole  true.  Among  my 
lost  letters  there  was  one  which  I  most  especially 
regret  not  to  be  able  to  quote,  for  it  was  very 
long,  perhaps  containing  two  thousand  words, 
which  he  sent  to  me  when  he  knew  I  had  been 
asked  to  do  this  article.  Now  the  purport  of 
Maitland's  letter  was  to  prove  to  me  that  every 
one  was  wrong  w^ho  said  he  had  no  humour. 
In  one  sense  there  can  be  no  greater  proof  that 
anybody  who  said  so  was  right.  He  enumerated 
carefully  all  the  characters  in  all  the  books  he 
had  hitherto  written  in  whom  he  thought  there 
was  real  humour.  He  gave  me  a  preposterous 
list  of  these  individuals,  with  his  comments,  and 
appealed  to  me  in  all  deadly  seriousness  to  know 
whether  I  did  not  agree  with  him  that  they  were 
humorous.  But  the  truth  is  that,  save  as  a  talker, 
he  had  very  little  humour,  and  even  then  it  was 
frequently  verbal.  It  was,  however,  occasion- 
ally very  grim,  and  its  strength,  oddly  enough, 
was  of  the  American  kind,  since  it  consisted  of 
managed  exaggeration.  He  had  a  certain  joy 
in  constructing  more  or  less  humorous  nick- 
names for  people.     Sometimes  these  were  good. 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  105 

and  sometimes  bad,  but  when  he  christened  them 
once  he  kept  to  it  always.  I  believe  the  only 
man  of  his  acquaintance  who  had  no  nickname 
at  all  was  George  Meredith,  but  then  he  loved 
and  admired  Meredith  in  no  common  fashion. 
In  some  of  his  books  he  speaks,  apparently  not 
without  some  learning,  of  music,  but  there  are, 
I  fancy,  signs  that  his  knowledge  of  it  was  more 
careful  construction  than  actual  knowledge  or 
deep  feeling.  Nevertheless  he  did  at  times  dis- 
cover a  real  comprehension  of  the  greater  musi- 
cians, especially  of  Chopin.  Seeing  that  this 
was  so,  it  is  very  curious,  and  more  than  curious 
in  a  writer,  that  he  had  a  measureless  adora- 
tion of  barrel  organs.  He  delighted  in  them 
strangely,  and  when  any  Italian  musician  came 
into  his  dingy  street  or  neighbourhood,  he  would 
set  the  window  open  and  listen  with  ardour. 
Being  so  poor,  he  could  rarely  afford  to  give 
away  money  even  in  the  smallest  sum.  Pen- 
nies were  indeed  pennies  to  him.  But  he  did 
sometimes  bestow  pence  on  wandering  Italians 
who  ground  out  Verdi  in  the  crowded  streets. 
Among  the  many  languages  which  he  knew  was, 
of  course,  Italian;  for,  as  I  have  said,  he  read 
the  "Divina  Commedia"  easily,  reading  it  for 
relaxation  as  he  did  Aristophanes.  It  was  a 
great  pleasure  to  him,  even  before  he  went  to 
Italy,  to  speak  a  few  words  in  their  own  tongue 


106  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

to  these  Italians  of  the  English  streets.  He  re- 
membered that  this  music  came  from  the  south, 
the  south  that  was  always  his  Mecca,  the  Kibleh 
of  the  universe.  Years  afterwards,  when  he  had 
been  in  the  south,  and  knew  Naples  and  the 
joyous  crowds  of  the  Chaiaja — long  before  I 
had  been  there  and  had  listened  to  its  uproar 
from  the  Belvidere  of  San  Martino — he  found 
Naples  chiefly  a  city  of  this  joyous  popular 
music.  Naples,  he  said,  was  the  most  interest- 
ing modern  city  in  Europe ;  and  yet  I  believe  the 
chief  joy  he  had  there  was  hearing  its  music,  and 
the  singing  of  the  lazzaroni  down  by  Santa 
Lucia.  ^'Funiculi,  Funicula,"  he  loved  as  much 
as  if  it  were  the  work  of  a  classic,  and  ''Santa 
Lucia"  appealed  to  him  like  a  Greek  chorus.  I 
remember  that,  years  later,  he  wrote  to  me  a  let- 
ter of  absurd  and  exaggerated  anger,  which  was 
yet  perfectly  serious,  about  the  action  of  the  Ne- 
apolitan municipality  in  forbidding  street  organs 
to  play  in  the  city.  Sometimes,  though  rarely, 
seeing  that  he  could  not  often  afford  a  shilling, 
he  went  to  great  concerts  in  London.  Certainly 
he  spoke  as  one  not  without  instruction  in  musical 
subjects  in  ''The  Vortex,"  but  I  fancy  that  musi- 
cal experts  might  find  flaws  in  his  nomenclature. 
Nevertheless  he  did  love  music  with  a  certain 
ardent  passion.  I 

He  was  a  man  not  without  a  certain  sensu- 


t 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  107 

ality,  but  it  was  his  sensuousness  which  was  in 
many  ways  the  most  salient  point  in  his  char- 
acter. As  I  often  told  him,  he  was  a  kind  of 
incomplete  Rabelaisian.  That  was  suggested  to 
me  by  his  delighted  use  of  Gargantuan  epithets 
with  regard  to  the  great  recurrent  subject  of 
food.  He  loved  all  things  which  were  redolent 
of  oil  and  grease  and  fatness.  The  joy  of  great 
abundance  appealed  to  him,  and  I  verily  believe 
that  to  him  the  great  outstanding  characteristic 
of  the  past  in  England  was  its  abundant  table. 
Indeed,  in  all  things  but  rowdy  indecency,  he 
was  a  Rabelaisian,  and  being  such,  he  yet  had  to 
put  up  with  poor  and  simple  food.  However, 
provided  it  was  at  hand  in  large  quantities,  he 
was  ready  to  feed  joyously.  He  would  exclaim : 
"Now  for  our  squalid  meal!  I  wonder  what 
Harold  Edgeworth,  or  good  old  Edmund  Roden 
would  say  to  this?"  When  I  think  of  the  mea- 
gre preface  that  Harold  Edgeworth  wrote  in 
later  years  for  ''Basil,"  when  that  done  by  G.  H. 
Rivers — afterwards  published  separately — did 
not  meet  with  the  approval  of  Maitland's  rel- 
atives and  executors,  I  feel  that  Edgeworth  some- 
what deserved  the  implied  scorn  of  Maitland's 
words.  As  for  Edmund  Roden,  he  often  spoke 
of  him  affectionately.  In  later  years  he  some- 
times went  down  to  Felixstowe  to  visit  him.  He 
liked  his  house  amazingly,  and  was  very  much 


108  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

at  home  in  it.  It  was  there  that  he  met  Grant 
Allen,  and  Sir  Luke  Redburn,  whom  he  declared 
to  be  the  most  interesting  people  that  he  saw  in 
Felixstowe  at  that  time. 

I  am  not  sure  whether  it  was  on  this  particular 
occasion,  perhaps  in  1895,  that  he  went  down  to 
Essex  with  a  great  prejudice  against  Grant 
Allen.  The  reason  of  this  was  curious.  He 
was  always  most  vicious  when  any  writer  who 
obviously  lived  in  comfort,  complained  loudly 
and  bitterly  of  the  pittance  of  support  given 
him  by  the  public,  and  the  public's  faithful 
servants,  the  publishers.  When  Allen  growled 
furiously  on  this  subject  in  a  newspaper  inter- 
view Maitland  recalled  to  me  with  angry 
amusement  a  certain  previous  article  in  which,  if 
I  remember  rightly,  Grant  Allen  proclaimed  his 
absolute  inability  to  write  if  he  were  not  in  a 
comfortable  room  with  rose-coloured  curtains. 
^'Rose-coloured  curtains!"  said  Maitland  con- 
temptuously, and  looking  round  his  own  room 
one  certainly  found  nothing  of  that  kind.  It 
was  perhaps  an  extraordinary  thing,  one  of  the 
many  odd  things  in  his  character,  that  the  man 
who  loved  the  south  so,  who  always  dreamed  of 
it,  seemed  to  see  everything  at  that  period  of  his 
life  in  the  merest  black  and  white.  There  was 
not  a  spark  or  speck  of  colour  in  his  rooms. 
Now  in  my  one  poor  room  in  Chelsea  I  had  hung 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  109 

up  all  sorts  of  water-colours  acquired  by  various 
means  from  artists  who  were  friends  of  mine. 
By  hook  or  by  crook  I  got  hold  of  curtains  with 
colour  in  them,  and  carpets,  too,  and  Japanese 
fans.  My  room  was  red  and  yellow  and  scarlet, 
while  his  were  a  dingy  monochrome,  as  if  they 
sympathised  with  the  outlook  at  the  back  of  his 
flat,  which  stared  down  upon  the  inferno  of  the 
Metropolitan  Railway.  But  to  return  to  Grant 
Allen.  Maitland  now  wrote:  ''However,  I  like 
him  very  much.  He  is  quite  a  simple,  and  very 
gentle  fellow,  crammed  with  multifarious  knowl- 
edge, enthusiastic  in  scientific  pursuits.  With 
fiction  and  that  kind  of  thing  he  ought  never  to 
have  meddled;  it  is  the  merest  pot-boiling.  He 
reads  nothing  whatever  but  books  of  scientific 
interest." 

It  was  at  Felixstowe,  too,  that  he  met  Carew 
Latter  who  induced  him  to  write  twenty  papers 
in  one  of  the  journals  Latter  conducted.  They 
were  to  be  of  more  or  less  disreputable  London 
life.  Some  of  them  at  least  have  been  reprinted 
in  his  volumes  of  short  stories.  There  is  certainly 
no  colour  in  them;  in  some  ways  they  resemble 
sketches  with  the  dry-point.  Of  course  after  he 
had  once  been  on  the  continent,  and  had  got  south 
to  Marseilles  and  the  Cannebiere,  he  learnt  to 
know  what  colour  was,  and  wrote  of  it  in  a  way 
he  had  never  done  before,  as  I  noticed  particu- 


110  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

larly  in  one  paragraph  about  Capri  seen  at  sunset 
from  Naples.  In  this  sudden  discovery  of  colour 
he  reminded  me,  oddly  enough,  of  my  old  ac- 
quaintance Wynne,  the  now  justly  celebrated 
painter,  who,  up  to  a  certain  time  in  his  life,  had 
painted  almost  in  monochrome,  and  certainly  in 
a  perpetual  grey  chord.  Then  he  met  Marvell, 
the  painter,  who  was,  if  anything,  a  colourist.  I 
do  not  think  Marvell  influenced  Wynne  in  any- 
thing but  colour,  but  from  that  day  Wynne  was 
a  colourist,  and  so  remains,  although  to  it  he  has 
added  a  great  and  real  power  of  design  and  dec- 
oration. It  is  true  that  Maitland  never  became 
a  colourist  in  writing,  but  those  who  have  read 
his  work  with  attention  will  observe  that  after  a 
certain  date  he  was  much  more  conscious  of  the 
world's  colour. 

In  those  days  our  poverty  and  our  ambition 
made  great  subjects  for  our  talks.  I  myself  had 
been  writing  for  some  years  with  no  more  than  a 
succes  d'estime,  and  I  sometimes  thought  that  I 
would  throw  up  the  profession  and  go  back  to 
Australia  or  America,  or  to  the  sea,  or  would  try 
Africa  at  last.  But  Maitland  had  no  such  pos- 
sibilities within  him.  He  maintained  grimly, 
though  not  without  humour,  that  his  only  pos- 
sible refuge  when  war,  or  some  other  final  dis- 
aster made  it  impossible  for  writers  to  earn  their 
difficult  living,  was  a  certain  block  of  buildings 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  111 

opposite  7  K.  This,  however,  was  not  Madame 
Tussaud's  as  the  careless  might  imagine,  it  was 
the  Marylebone  workhouse,  which  he  said  he  re- 
garded with  a  proprietary  eye.  It  always  af- 
forded him  a  subject  for  conversation  when  his 
prospects  seemed  rather  poorer  than  usual.  It 
was,  at  any  rate,  he  declared,  very  handy  for  him 
when  he  became  unable  to  do  more  work.  No 
doubt  this  was  his  humour,  but  there  was  some- 
thing in  this  talk  which  was  more  than  half 
serious.  He  always  liked  to  speak  of  the  gloomy 
side  of  things,  and  I  possess  many  letters  of  his 
which  end  with  references  to  the  workhouse,  or 
to  some  impending,  black  disaster.  In  one  he 
said:  ^'I  wish  I  could  come  up,  but  am  too  low 
in  health  and  spirits  to  move  at  present.  A  cold 
clings  about  me,  and  the  future  looks  dark." 
Again  he  said:  ''No,  I  shall  never  speak  of  my 
work.  I^  has  become  a  weariness  and  toil — 
nothing  more."  And  again:  "It  is  a  bad,  bad 
business,  that  of  life  at  present."  And  yet  once 
more:  "It  is  idle  to  talk  about  occupation — by 
now  I  have  entered  on  the  last  stage  of  life's 
journey."  This  was  by  no  means  when  he  had 
come  towards  the  end  of  his  life.  However, 
the  workhouse  does  come  up,  even  at  the  end, 
in  a  letter  written  about  two  months  before  his 
death.  He  wrote  to  me :  "I  have  been  turning 
the    pages    with    great   pleasure,    to    keep    my 


112  HENRY  MAITLAND 

thoughts  from  the  workhouse.''  Those  who  did 
not  know  him  would  not  credit  him  with  the 
courage  of  desperation  which  he  really  possessed, 
if  they  saw  his  letters  and  knew  nothing  more  of 
the  man. 


i 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  art  of  portraiture,  whether  in  words 
or  paint,  is  very  difficult,  and  appears 
less  easy  as  I  attempt  to  draw  Maitland. 
Nevertheless  the  time  comes  when  the  artist 
seems  to  see  his  man  standing  on  his  feet  before 
him,  put  down  in  his  main  planes,  though  not 
yet,  perhaps,  with  any  subtlety.  The  anatomy  is 
suggested  at  any  rate,  if  there  are  bones  in  the 
subject  or  in  the  painter.  As  it  seems  to  me, 
Maitland  should  now  stand  before  those  who 
have  read  so  far  with  sympathy  and  understand- 
ing. I  have  not  finished  my  drawing,  but  it 
might  even  now  suffice  as  a  sketch,  and  seem 
from  some  points  of  view  to  be  not  wholly  inade- 
quate. It  is  by  no  means  easy  to  put  him  down  in 
a  few  words,  but  patience  and  the  addition  of 
detail  reach  their  end,  it  may  be  not  without 
satisfaction — for  ^'with  bread  and  steel  one  gets 
to  China."  It  is  not  possible  to  etch  Maitland 
in  a  few  lines,  for  as  it  seems  to  me  it  is  the  little 
details  of  his  character  with  which  I  am  most 
concerned  that  give  him  his  greatest  value.  It 
is  not  so  much  the  detail  of  his  actual  life,  but  the 


113 


114  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

little  things  that  he  said,  and  the  way  he  seemed 
to  think,  or  even  the  way  that  he  avoided  think- 
ing, which  I  desire  to  put  down.  And  when  I 
say  those  things  he  wished  not  to  think  of,  I  am 
referring  more  especially  to  his  views  of  the  uni- 
verse, and  of  the  world  itself,  those  views  which 
are  a  man's  philosophy,  and  not  less  his  philos- 
ophy when  of  set  purpose  he  declines  to  think 
of  them  at  all,  for  this  Maitland  did  without  any 
doubt.  Goethe  said,  when  he  spoke,  if  I  re- 
member rightly,  about  all  forms  of  religious  and 
metaphysical  speculation,  ''Much  contemplation, 
or  brooding  over  these  things  is  disturbing  to  the 
spirit."  Unfortunately  I  do  not  know  German 
so  I  cannot  find  the  reference  to  this,  but  Mait- 
land, who  knew  the  language  very  thoroughly 
and  had  read  nearly  everything  of  great  impor- 
tance in  it,  often  quoted  this  passage,  having  nat- 
urally a  great  admiration  for  Goethe.  I  do  not 
mean  that  he  admired  him  merely  for  his  posi- 
tion in  the  world  of  letters.  What  he  did  admire 
in  Goethe  was  what  he  himself  liked  and  desired 
so  greatly.  He  wished  for  peace,  for  calmness 
of  spirit.  He  did  not  like  to  be  disturbed  in  any  ij 
way  whatsoever.  He  would  not  disturb  him-  ii 
self.  He  wished  people  to  be  reasonable,  and  i* 
thought  this  was  a  reasonable  request  to  make  of  ( 
them.  I  remember  on  one  occasion  when  I  had  \^ 
been  listening  to  him   declaiming  about  some  !l 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         115 

one's  peculiar  lack  of  reasonableness,  which 
seemed  to  him  the  one  great  human  quality,  that 
I  said:  "Maitland,  what  would  you  do  if  you 
were  having  trouble  with  a  woman  who  was  in  a 
very  great  rage  with  you?"  He  replied,  with  an 
air  of  surprise,  ^Why,  of  course,  I  should  reason 
with  her."  I  said  shortly,  "Don't  ever  get  mar- 
ried again!"  Nevertheless  he  was  a  wonder- 
fully patient  and  reasonable  man  himself,  and 
truly  lacked  everything  characteristic  of  the  com- 
batant. He  would  discuss,  he  would  never 
really  argue.  I  do  not  suppose  that  he  was  phys- 
ically a  coward,  but  his  dread  of  scenes  and  phys- 
ical violence  lay  very  deep  in  his  organisation. 
Although  he  used  me  as  a  model  I  never  really 
drew  him  at  length  in  any  of  my  own  books,  but 
naturally  he  was  a  subject  of  great  psychological 
interest  to  me.  Pursuing  my  studies  in  him  I 
said,  one  day,  '^Maitland,  what  would  you  do  if 
a  man  disagreed  with  you,  got  outrageously  and 
unreasonably  angry,  and  slapped  you  in  the 
face?"  He  replied,  in  his  characteristically  low 
and  concentrated  voice,  "Do?  I  should  look  at 
him  with  the  most  infinite  disgust,  and  turn 
away." 

His  horror  of  militarism  was  something  al- 
most comic,  for  it  showed  his  entire  incapacity 
for  grasping  the  world's  situation  as  it  shows  it- 
self to  any  real  and  ruthless  student  of  political 


116  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

sociology  who  is  not  bogged  in  the  mud  flats  of 
some  Utopian  island.  Once  we  were  together  on 
the  Horse  Guards'  Parade  and  a  company  of  the 
Guards  came  marching  up.  We  stood  to  watch 
them  pass,  and  when  they  had  gone  by  he  turned 
to  me  and  said,  ^'Mark  you,  my  dear  man,  this, 
this  is  the  nineteenth  century!"  In  one  of  his 
letters  written  to  me  after  his  second  marriage 
he  said  of  his  eldest  son:  ''I  hope  to  send  him 
abroad,  to  some  country  where  there  is  no  possi- 
bility of  his  having  to  butcher  or  be  butchered." 
This,  of  course,  was  his  pure  reason  pushed  to  the 
point  where  reason  becomes  mere  folly,  for  such 
is  the  practical  antinomy  of  pure  reason  in  life. 
It  was  in  this  that  he  showed  his  futile  ideal- 
ism, which  was  in  conflict  with  what  may  be 
called  truly  his  real  pessimism.  That  he  did  good 
work  in  many  of  his  books  dealing  with  the  lower 
classes  is  quite  obvious,  and  cannot  be  denied. 
He  showed  us  the  things  that  exist.  It  is  per- 
fectly possible,  and  even  certainly  true,  that  many 
of  the  most  pessimistic  writers  are  in  reality  opti- 
mists. They  show  us  the  grey  in  order  that  we 
may  presently  make  it  rose.  But  Maitland  wrote 
absolutely  without  hope.  He  took  his  subjects 
as  mere  subjects,  and  putting  them  on  the  table, 
lectured  in  pathology.  He  made  books  of  his 
dead-house  experiences,  and  sold  them,  but  never 
believed  that  he,  or  any  other  man,  could  really 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  117 

do  good  by  speaking  of  what  he  had  seen  and 
dilated  upon.  The  people  as  a  body  were  vile 
and  hopeless.  He  did  not  even  inquire  how  they 
became  so.  He  thought  nothing  could  be  done, 
and  did  not  desire  to  do  it.  His  future  was  in 
the  past.  The  world's  great  age  would  never 
renew  itself,  and  only  he  and  a  few  others  really 
understood  the  desperate  state  into  which  things 
had  drifted.  Since  his  death  there  has  been 
some  talk  about  his  religion.  I  shall  speak  of 
this  later,  on  a  more  fitting  occasion ;  but,  truly 
speaking,  he  had  no  religion.  When  he  gave  up 
his  temporary  Positivist  pose,  which  was  entirely 
due  to  his  gratitude  to  Harold  Edgeworth  for 
helping  him,  he  refused  to  think  of  these  things 
again.  They  disturbed  the  spirit.  If  I  ever  en- 
deavoured to  inveigle  him  into  a  discussion  or  an 
argument  upon  any  metaphysical  subject  he  grew 
visibly  uneasy.  He  declined  to  argue,  or  even  to 
discuss,  and  though  I  know  that  in  later  life  he 
admitted  that  even  immortality  was  possible  I 
defy  any  one  to  bring  a  tittle  of  evidence  to  show 
that  he  ever  went  further.  This  attitude  to  all 
forms  of  religious  and  metaphysical  thought  was 
very  curious  to  me.  It  was,  indeed,  almost  inex- 
plicable, as  I  have  an  extreme  pleasure  in  specu- 
lative inquiry  of  all  kinds.  The  truth  is  that  on 
this  side  of  his  nature  he  was  absolutely  wanting. 
Such  things  interested  him  no  more  than  music 


118  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

interests  a  tone-deaf  man  who  cannot  distinguish 
the  shriek  of  a  tom-cat  from  the  sound  of  a  violin. 
If  I  did  try  to  speak  of  such  things  he  listened 
with  an  air  of  outraged  and  sublime  patience 
which  must  have  been  obvious  to  any  one  but  a 
bore.  Whether  his  philosophy  was  sad  or  not, 
he  would  not  have  it  disturbed. 

His  real  interest  in  religion  seemed  to  lie  in  his 
notion  that  it  was  a  curious  form  of  delusion 
almost  ineradicable  from  the  human  mind. 
There  is  a  theory,  very  popular  among  votaries  of 
the  creeds,  which  takes  the  form  of  denying  that 
any  one  can  really  be  an  atheist.  This  is  cer- 
tainly not  true,  but  it  helps  one  to  understand  the 
theologic  mind,  which  has  an  imperative  desire 
to  lay  hold  of  something  like  an  inclusive  hypoth- 
esis to  rest  on.  So  far  as  Maitland  was  con- 
cerned there  was  no  more  necessity  to  have  an 
hypothesis  about  God  than  there  was  to  have  one 
about  quaternions,  and  quaternions  certainly  did 
not  interest  him.  He  shrugged  his  shoulders 
and  put  these  matters  aside,  for  in  many  things 
he  had  none  of  the  weaknesses  of  humanity, 
though  in  others  he  had  more  than  his  share.  In 
his  letters  to  G.  H.  Rivers,  which  I  have  had  the 
privilege  of  reading,  there  are  a  few  references  to 
Rivers'  habits  and  powers  of  speculation.  I  think 
it  was  somewhere  in  1900  or  1901  that  he  read 
"Forecasts."     By  this  time  he  had  a  strong  feel- 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  119 

ing  of  affection  for  Rivers,  and  a  very  great  ad- 
miration for  him.  His  references  to  him  in  the 
^^Meditations"  are  sufficiently  near  the  truth  to 
corroborate  this.  Nevertheless  his  chief  feeling 
towards  Rivers  and  his  work,  beyond  the  mere 
fact  that  it  was  a  joy  to  him  that  a  man  could 
make  money  by  doing  good  stuff,  was  one  of 
amazement  and  surprise  that  any  one  could  be 
deeply  interested  in  the  future,  and  could  give 
himself  almost  wholly  or  even  with  partial  en- 
ergy, to  civic  purposes.  And  so  he  wrote  to 
Rivers:  ^'I  must  not  pretend  to  care  very  much 
about  the  future  of  the  human  race.  Come  what 
may,  folly  and  misery  are  sure  to  be  the  prevalent 
features  of  life,  but  your  ingenuity  in  speculation, 
the  breadth  of  your  views,  and  the  vigour  of  your 
writing,  make  this  book  vastly  enjoyable.  The 
critical  part  of  it  satisfies,  and  often  delights  me. 
Stupidity  should  have  a  sore  back  for  some  time 
to  come,  and  many  a  wind-bag  will  be  uneasily 
aware  of  collapse." 

It  is  interesting  to  note,  now  that  I  am  speak- 
ing of  his  friendship  for  Rivers,  and  apropos  of 
what  I  shall  have  to  say  later  about  his  religious 
views,  that  he  wrote  to  Rivers :  ''By  the  bye,  you 
speak  of  God.  Well,  I  understand  what  you 
mean,  but  the  word  makes  me  stumble  rather.  I 
have  grown  to  shrink  utterly  from  the  use  of  such 
terms,  and  though  I  admit,  perforce,  a  universal 


120'  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

law,  I  am  so  estranged  by  its  unintelligibility 
that  not  even  a  desire  to  be  reverent  can  make 
those  old  names  in  any  way  real  to  me."  So 
later  he  said  that  he  was  at  a  loss  to  grasp  what 
Rivers  meant  when  he  wrote:  ^'There  stirs 
something  within  us  now  that  can  never  die 
again."  I  think  Maitland  totally  misinterpreted 
the  passage,  which  was  rather  apropos  of  the 
awakening  of  the  civic  spirit  in  mankind  than  of 
anything  else,  but  he  went  on  to  say  that  he  put 
aside  the  vulgar  interpretation  of  such  words. 
However,  was  it  Rivers'  opinion  that  the  ma- 
terial doom  of  the  earth  did  not  involve  the  doom 
of  earthly  life?  He  added  that  Rivers'  declared 
belief  in  the  coherency  and  purpose  of  things  was 
pleasant  to  him,  for  he  himself  could  not  doubt 
for  a  moment  that  there  was  some  purpose.  This 
is  as  far  as  he  ever  went.  On  the  other  hand,  he 
did  doubt  whether  we,  in  any  sense  of  the  pro- 
noun, should  ever  be  granted  understanding  of 
that  purpose.  Of  course  all  this  shows  that  he 
possessed  no  metaphysical  endowments  or  appa- 
ratus. He  loved  knowledge  pure  and  simple,  but 
when  it  came  to  the  exercises  of  the  metaphysical 
mind  he  was  pained  and  puzzled.  He  lacked 
any  real  education  in  philosophy,  and  did  not 
even  understand  its  peculiar  vocabulary.  How- 
ever vain  those  of  us  who  have  gone  through  the 
metaphysical  mill  may  think  it  in  actual  prod- 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  121 

ucts,  we  are  all  yet  aware  that  it  helps  greatly 
to  formulate  our  own  philosophy,  or  even  our 
own  want  of  it.  For  it  clears  the  air.  It  cuts 
away  all  kinds  of  undergrowth.  It  at  any  rate 
shows  us  that  there  is  no  metaphysical  way  out, 
for  the  simple  reason  that  there  has  never  existed 
one  metaphysician  who  did  not  destroy  another. 
They  are  all  mutually  destructive.  But  Mait- 
land  had  no  joy  in  construction  or  destruction; 
and,  as  I  have  said,  he  barely  understood  the 
technical  terms  of  metaphysics.  There  was  a 
great  difference  with  regard  to  these  inquiries 
between  him  and  Rivers.  The  difference  was 
that  Rivers  enjoyed  metaphysical  thinking  and 
speculation  where  Maitland  hated  it.  But  all 
the  same  Rivers  took  it  up  much  too  late  in  life, 
and  about  the  year  1900  made  wonderful  dis- 
coveries which  had  been  commonplaces  to  Ar- 
istotle. A  thing  like  this  would  not  have  mat- 
tered much  if  he  had  regarded  it  as  education. 
However,  he  regarded  it  as  discovery,  and  wrote 
books  about  it  which  inspired  debates,  and  ap- 
parently filled  the  metaphysicians  with  great  joy. 
It  is  always  a  pleasure  to  the  evil  spirit  that  for 
ever  lives  in  man  to  see  the  ablest  people  of  the 
time  showing  that  they  are  not  equally  able  in 
some  other  direction  than  that  in  which  they  have 
gained  distinction. 

It  is  curious  how  this  native  dislike  of  Mait- 


122  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

land  to  being  disturbed  by  speculative  thought 
comes  out  in  a  criticism  he  made  of  Thomas 
Hardy.  He  had  always  been  one  of  this  writer's 
greatest  admirers,  and  I  know  he  especially  loved 
"The  Woodlanders,"  but  he  wrote  in  a  letter  to 
Dr.  Lake  something  very  odd  about  "Jude  the 
Obscure."  He  calls  it:  "a  sad  book!  Poor 
Thomas  is  utterly  on  the  wrong  tack,  and  I  fear 
he  will  never  get  back  into  the  right  one.  At  his 
age,  a  habit  of  railing  at  the  universe  is  not  over- 
come." Of  course  this  criticism  is  wholly  with- 
out any  value  as  regards  Hardy's  work,  but  it  is 
no  little  side  light  on  Maitland's  own  peculiar 
habits  of  thought,  or  of  persistent  want  of 
thought,  on  the  great  matters  of  speculation. 
His  objection  was  not  to  anything  that  Hardy 
said,  but  to  the  fact  that  the  latter's  work,  filled 
with  what  Maitland  calls  ''railing  at  the  uni- 
verse," personally  disturbed  him.  Anything 
which  broke  up  his  little  semi-classic  universe, 
the  literary  hut  which  he  had  built  for  himself  as 
a  shelter  from  the  pitiless  storm  of  cosmic  in- 
fluences, made  him  angry  and  uneasy  for  days 
and  weeks.  He  never  lived  to  read  Hardy's 
''Dynasts,"  a  book  which  stands  almost  alone  in 
literature,  and  is  to  my  mind  a  greater  book  than 
Goethe's  "Faust,"  but  if  he  had  read  it  I  doubt  if 
he  would  have  forgiven  Thomas  Hardy  for  dis- 
turbing him.     He  always  wanted  to  be  left  alone. 


OP^  HENRY  MAITLAND  123 

He  had  constructed  his  pattern  of  the  universe, 
and  any  one  who  shook  it  he  denounced  with, 
''Confound    the    fellow!     He    makes    me    un- 
happy."    The  one  book  that  he  did  read,  which 
is  in  itself  essentially  a  disturbing  book  to  many 
people,  and  apparently  read  with  some  pleasure, 
was  the  earliest  volume  of  Dr.  Frazer's  ''Golden 
Bough";  but  it  is  a  curious  thing  that  what  in- 
terested him,  and  indeed  actually  pleased  him, 
was  Frazer's  side  attacks  upon  the  dogmas  of 
Christianity.     He    said:     "The    curious    thing 
about  Frazer's  book  is,  that  in  illustrating  the  old 
religious  usages  connected  with  tree-worship  and 
so  on,  he  throws  light  upon  every  dogma  of 
Christianity.     This    by   implication;   he    never 
does    it    expressly.     Edmund    Roden    has    just 
pointed  this  out  to  the  Folk-lore  Society,  wath 
the  odd  result  that  Gladstone  wrote  at  once  re- 
signing membership."     This  was  written  after 
Gladstone  died,  but  it  reads  as  if  Maitland  was 
not  aware  that  he  was  dead.     Odd  as  it  may 
seem,  it  is  perfectly  possible  that  he  did  not  know 
it.     He  cared  very  little  for  the  newspapers,  and 
sometimes  did  not  read  any  for  long  periods. 
It  is  rather  curious  that  when  I  proved  to  him 
in  later  years  that  he  had  once  dated  his  letters 
according  to  the  Positivist  Calendar,  he  seemed 
a  little  disturbed  and  shocked.     Still,  it  was  very 
natural  that  when  exposed  to  Positivist  influ- 


124  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

ences  he  should  have  become  a  Positivist,  for 
among  the  people  of  that  odd  faith,  if  faith  it 
can  be  called,  he  found  both  kindness  and  intel- 
lectual recognition.  But  when  his  mind  became 
clearer  and  calmer,  and  something  of  the  storm 
and  stress  had  passed  by,  he  was  aware  that  his 
attitude  had  been  somewhat  pathologic,  and  did 
not  like  to  recall  it.  This  became  very  much 
clearer  to  him,  and  indeed  to  me,  when  another 
friend  of  ours,  a  learned  and  very  odd  German 
who  lived  and  starved  in  London,  went  com- 
pletely under  in  the  same  curious  religious  way. 
His  name  was  Schmidt.  He  remained  to  the 
day  of  Maitland's  death  a  very  great  friend  of 
his,  and  I  believe  he  possesses  more  letters  from 
Henry  Maitland  than  any  man  living — greatly 
owing  to  his  own  vast  Teutonic  energy  and  in- 
dustry in  writing  to  his  friends. 

But  in  London  Schmidt  came  to  absolute  desti- 
tution. I  myself  got  to  know  him  through  Mait- 
land. It  appeared  that  he  owned  a  collie  dog, 
which  he  found  at  last  impossible  to  feed,  even 
though  he  starved  himself  to  do  so.  Maitland 
told  me  of  this,  and  introduced  me  to  Schmidt. 
On  hearing  his  story,  and  seeing  the  dog,  I  went 
to  my  own  people,  who  were  then  living  in  Clap- 
ham,  and  asked  them  if  they  would  take  the 
animal  from  Schmidt  and  keep  it.  When  I  saw 
the  German  again  I  was  given  the  dog,  together 


I 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  125 

with  a  paper  on  which  were  written  all  Don's 
peculiar  tricks,  most  of  which  had  been  taught 
to  him  by  his  master  and  needed  the  German 
language  for  their  words  of  command.  Soon 
after  this  Schmidt  fell  into  even  grimmer  pov- 
erty, and  was  rescued  from  the  deepest  gulf  by 
some  religious  body  analogous  in  those  days  to 
the  Salvation  Army  of  the  present  time.  Of 
this  Maitland  knew  nothing,  until  one  day  going 
down  the  Strand  he  found  his  friend  giving  away 
religious  pamphlets  at  the  door  of  Exeter  Hall. 
When  he  told  me  this  he  said  he  went  next  day 
to  see  the  man  in  his  single  room  lodging  and 
found  him  sitting  at  the  table  with  several  open 
Bibles  spread  out  before  him.  He  explained 
that  he  was  making  a  commentary  on  the  Bible 
at  the  instigation  of  one  of  his  new  friends,  and 
he  added:  ^'Here,  here  is  henceforth  my  life's 
work."  Shortly  after  this,  I  believe  through 
Harold  Edgeworth  or  some  one  else  to  whom 
Maitland  appealed,  the  poor  German  was  given 
work  in  some  quasi-public  institution,  and  with 
better  fare  and  more  ease  his  brain  recovered. 
He  never  mentioned  religion  again.  It  was  thus 
that  Maitland  himself  recovered  from  similar 
but  less  serious  influences  in  somewhat  similar 
conditions.  For  some  weeks  in  1885  I  was  my- 
self exposed  to  such  influences  in  Chicago,  in 
even  bitterer  conditions  than  those  from  which 


126  HENRY  MAITLAND 

Schmidt  and  Maitland  had  suffered,  but  not  for 
one  moment  did  I  alter  my  opinions.  As  a  kind 
of  final  commentary  on  this  chapter  and  this  side 
of  Maitland's  mind,  one  might  quote  from  a 
letter  to  Rivers:  ''Seeing  that  mankind  cannot 
have  done  altogether  with  the  miserable  mystery 
of  life,  undoubtedly  it  behoves  us  before  all  else 
to  enlighten  as  we  best  can  the  lot  of  those  for 
whose  being  we  are  responsible.  This  for  the 
vast  majority  of  men — a  few  there  are,  I  think, 
who  are  justified  in  quite  neglecting  that  view 
of  life,  and,  by  the  bye,  Marcus  Aurelius  was 
one  of  them.  Nothing  he  could  have  done 
would  have  made  Commodus  other  than  he  was 
■ — I  use,  of  course,  the  everyday  phrases,  regard- 
less of  determinism — and  then  one  feels  pretty 
sure  that  Commodus  was  not  his  son  at  all.  For 
him,  life  was  the  individual,  and  whether  he  has 
had  any  true  influence  or  not,  I  hold  him  abso- 
lutely justified  in  thinking  as  he  did."  There 
again  comes  out  Maitland's  view,  his  anti-social 
view,  the  native  egoism  of  the  man,  his  peculiar 
solitude  of  thought. 


CHAPTER  VI 

TO  have  seen  ''Shelley  plain"  once  only  is 
to  put  down  a  single  point  on  clear  pa- 
per. To  have  seen  him  twice  gives  his 
biographer  the  right  to  draw  a  line.  Out  of 
three  points  may  come  a  triangle.  Out  of  the 
many  times  in  many  years  that  I  saw  Maitland 
comes  the  intricate  pattern  of  him.  I  would 
rather  do  a  little  book  like  "Manon  Lescaut" 
than  many  biographical  quartos  lying  as  heavy 
on  the  dead  as  Vanbrugh's  mansions.  If  there 
are  warts  on  Maitland  so  there  were  on  Crom- 
well. I  do  not  invent  like  the  old  cartogra- 
phers, who  adorned  their  maps  with  legends  say- 
ing, "Here  is  much  gold,"  or  "Here  are  found 
diamonds."  Nor  have  I  put  any  imaginary 
"Mountains  of  the  Moon"  into  his  map,  or 
adorned  vacant  parts  of  ocean  with  whales  or 
wonderful  monsters.  I  put  down  nothing  un- 
seen, or  most  reasonably  inferred.  In  spite  of 
my  desire,  which  is  sincere,  to  say  as  little  as  pos- 
sible about  myself,  I  find  I  have  to  speak  some- 
times of  things  primarily  my  own.  There  is  no 
doubt  it  did  Maitland  a  great  deal  of  good  to 

127 


128  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

have  somebody  to  interest  himself  in,  even  if  it 
were  no  one  of  more  importance  than  myself. 
Although  he  was  so  singularly  a  lonely  man,  he 
could  not  always  bury  himself  in  the  classics,  or 
even  in  his  work,  done  laboriously  in  eight  pro- 
digious hours.     We  for  ever  talked  about  what 
we  were  going  to  do,  and  there  was  very  little 
that  I  wrote,  up  to  the  time  of  his  leaving  Lon- 
don permanently,  which  I  did  not  discuss  with 
him.     Yet  I  was  aware  that  with  much  I  wrote 
he  was  wholly  dissatisfied.     I  remember  when  I 
was  still  living  in  Chelsea,  not  in  Danvers  Street 
but  in  Redburn  Street,  where  I  at  last  attained 
the  glory  of  two  rooms,  he  came  to  me  one  Sun- 
day in  a  very  uneasy  state  of  mind.     He  looked 
obviously  worried  and  troubled,  and  was  for  a 
long  time  silent  as  he  sat  over  the  fire.     I  asked 
him  again  and  again  what  was  the  matter,  be- 
cause, as  can  be  easily  imagined,  I  always  had 
the  notion  that  something  must  be  the  matter 
with  him,  or  soon  would  be.     In  answer  to  my 
repeated  importunities  he  said,  at  last:     "Well, 
the  fact  of  the  matter  is,  I  want  to  speak  to  you 
about  your  work."     It  appeared  that  I  and  my 
affairs  were   at  the  bottom  of  his   discomfort. 
He  told  me  that  he  had  been  thinking  of  my 
want  of  success,  and  that  he  had  made  up  his 
mind  to  tell  me  the  cause  of  it.     He  was  nervous 
and  miserable,  though  I  begged  him  to  speak 


i 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  129 

freely,  but  at  last  got  out  the  truth.  He  told 
me  that  he  did  not  think  I  possessed  the  quali- 
ties to  succeed  at  the  business  I  had  so  rashly 
commenced.  He  declared  that  it  was  not  that 
he  had  not  the  very  highest  opinion  of  such  a 
book  as  ''The  Western  Trail,"  but  as  regards 
fiction  he  felt  I  was  bound  to  be  a  failure. 
Those  who  knew  him  can  imagine  what  it  cost 
him  to  say  as  much  as  this.  I  believe  he  would 
have  preferred  to  destroy  half  a  book  and  begin 
it  again.  Naturally  enough  what  he  said  I 
found  very  disturbing,  but  I  am  pleased  to  say 
that  I  took  it  in  very  good  part,  and  told  him 
that  I  would  think  it  over  seriously.  As  may  be 
imagined,  I  did  a  great  deal  of  thinking  on 
the  subject,  but  the  result  of  my  cogitations 
amounted  to  this:  I  had  started  a  thing  and 
meant  to  go  through  with  it  at  all  costs.  I  wrote 
this  to  him  later,  and  the  little  incident  never 
made  any  difference  whatever  to  our  affection- 
ate friendship.  I  reminded  him  many  years 
after  of  what  he  had  said,  and  he  owned  then 
that  I  had  done  something  to  make  him  revise 
his  former  opinion.  When  I  come  to  speak  of 
some  of  his  letters  to  me  about  my  later  books  it 
will  be  seen  how  generous  he  could  be  to  a  friend 
who,  for  some  time  then,  had  not  been  very  en- 
thusiastic about  his  own  work.  I  have  said  be- 
fore, and  I  always  believed,  that  it  was  he  and 


130  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

not  myself  who  was  at  the  wrong  kind  of  task. 
Fiction,  even  as  he  understood  it,  was  not  for  a 
man  of  his   nature  and   faculties.     He  would 
have  been  in  his  true  element  as  a  don  of  a  col- 
lege, and  much  of  his  love  of  the  classics  was  a 
mystery  to  me,  as  it  would  have  been  to  most 
active  men  of  the  world,  however  well  educated. 
I    did   understand   his   passion   for   the   Greek 
tragedies,  but  he  had  almost  more  delight  in  the 
Romans ;  and,  with  the  exception  of  Catullus  and 
Lucretius,  the  Latin  classics  are  to  me  without 
any  savour.     There  is  no  doubt  that  in  many 
ways  I  was  but  a  barbarian  to  him.     For  one 
thing,  at  that  time  I  was  something  of  a  fanatical 
imperialist.     He  took  no  more  interest  in  the 
Empire,  except  as  literary  material,  than  he  did 
in  Nonconformist  theology.     Then  I  was  cer- 
tainly highly  patriotic  as  regards  England,  but 
he  was  very  cosmopolitan.     It  was  no  doubt  a 
very  strange  thing  that  he  should  have  spoken 
to  me  about  my  having  little  faculty  for  writing 
fiction  when  I  had  so  often  come  to  the  same 
silent     conclusion     about     himself.     Naturally 
enough  I  did  not  dare  to  tell  him  so,  for  if  such 
a  pronouncement  had  distressed  me  a  little  it 
would   distress   him  very  much   more.     Yet   I 
think  he  did  sometimes  understand  his  real  limi- 
tations, especially  in  later  years,  when  he  wrote 
more  criticism.     The  man  who  could  say  that 


I 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  131 

he  was  prepared  to  spend  the  years  from  thirty- 
six  to  forty  in  a  vigorous  apprenticeship  to 
English,  was  perfectly  capable  of  continuing 
that  apprenticeship  until  he  died. 

He  took  a  critical  and  wonderful  interest  in 
the  methods  of  all  men  of  letters,  and  that  par- 
ticular interest  with  regard  to  Balzac,  which 
was  known  to  many,  has  sometimes  been  mis- 
taken.    Folks  have  said,  and  even  written,  that 
he  meant  to  write  an  English  ''Comedie  Hu- 
I  maine."     There  is,  no  doubt,  a  touch  of  truth  in 
this   notion,   but  no  more  than   a   touch.     He 
would  have  liked  to  follow  in  Balzac's  mighty 
footsteps,  and  do  something  for  England  which 
would  possibly  be  inclusive  of  all  social  grades. 
I  At  any  rate  he  began  at  the  bottom  and  worked 
:  upwards.     It  is  quite  obvious  to  me  that  what 
prevented  him  from  going  further  in  any  such 
I  scheme  was  not  actually  a  want  of  power  or  any 
I  failure  of  industry,  it  was  a  real  failure  of  knowl- 
edge and  of  close  contact  with  the  classes  compos- 
ing the  whole  nation.    Beyond  the  lower  middle 
class  his  knowledge  was  not  very  deep.    He  was 
mentally  an  alien,  and  a  satiric  if  interested  in- 
truder.    He  had  been  exiled  for  the  unpardona- 
ble sins  of  his  youth.    It  is  impossible  for  any  man 
of  intellect  not  to  suspect  his  own  limitations,  and 
I  am  sure  he  knew  that  he  should  have  been  a 
pure  child  of  books,  for  as  soon  as  he  got  beyond 


132  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

the  pale  of  his  own  grim  surroundings,  those  sur- 
roundings which  had  been  burnt,  and  were  still 
being  burnt  into  his  soul,  he  apparently  lost  in- 
terest. Though  two  or  three  of  these  later  books 
have  indeed  much  merit,  such  novels  as  "The 
Vortex^'  and  "The  Best  of  All  Things"  are  really 
failures.  I  believe  he  felt  it.  Anthony  Hope 
Hawkins  once  wrote  to  me  apropos  of  some- 
thing, that  there  were  very  few  men  writing  who 
really  knew  that  all  real  knowledge  had  to  be 
"bought."  Maitland  had  bought  his  knowledge 
of  sorrow  and  suffering  and  certain  surroundings 
at  a  personal  price  that  few  can  pay  and  not  be 
bankrupt.  But  while  I  was  associating  with  al- 
most every  class  in  the  world  he  lived  truly 
alone.  There  were,  indeed,  long  months  when  he 
actually  saw  no  one,  and  there  were  other  peri- 
ods when  his  only  friend  besides  myself  was 
that  philosophic  German  whose  philosophy  put 
its  lofty  tail  between  its  legs  on  a  prolonged 
starvation  diet. 

As  one  goes  on  talking  of  him  and  considering 
his  nature  there  are  times  when  it  seems  amazing 
that  he  did  not  commit  suicide  and  have  done 
with  it.  Certainly  there  were  days  and  seasons 
when  I  thought  this  might  be  his  possible  end. 
But  some  men  break  and  others  bend,  and  in  him 
there  was  undoubtedly  some  curious  strength 
though  it  were  but  the  Will  to  Live  of  Schopen- 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  133 

hauer,  the  one  philosopher  he  sometimes  read. 
I  myself  used  to  think  that  it  was  perhaps  his 
native  sensuousness  which  kept  him  alive  in  spite 
of  all  his  misery.  No  man  ever  lived  who  en- 
joyed things  that  were  even  remotely  enjoyable 
more  acutely  than  himself,  though  I  think  his 
general  attitude  towards  life  was  like  his  attitude 
towards  people  and  the  world.  For  so  many 
good  men  Jehovah  would  have  spared  the  Cities 
of  the  Plains.  So  in  a  certain  sense  the  few  good 
folk  that  he  perceived  in  any  given  class  made 
him  endure  the  others  that  he  hated,  while  he 
painted  those  he  loved  against  their  dingy  and 
dreadful  background.  The  motto  on  the 
original  title-page  of  ^'The  Under  World"  was 
a  quotation  from  a  speech  by  Renan  delivered  at 
the  Academic  Frangaise  in  1889:  ''La  peinture 
d'un  fumier  pent  etre  justifiee  pourvu  qu'il  y 
pousse  une  belle  fleur;  sans  cela,  le  fumier  n'est 
que  repoussant."  The  few  beautiful  flowers  of 
the  world  for  Henry  Maitland  were  those  who 
hated  their  surroundings  and  desired  vainly  to 
grow  out  of  them.  Such  he  pitied,  hopeless  as 
he  believed  their  position,  and  vain  as  he  knew 
to  be  their  aspirations.  In  a  way  all  this  was 
nothing  but  translated  self-pity.  Had  he  been 
more  fortunate  in  his  youth  I  do  not  believe  he 
would  have  ever  turned  his  attention  in  any  way 
towards  social  afifairs,  in  which  he  took  no  native 


134  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

interest.     His  natural  sympathy  was  only  for 
those  whom  he  could  imagine  to  be  his  mental 
fellows.     Almost  every  sympathetic  character  in 
all  his  best  books  was  for  him  like  the  starling 
in  the  cage  of  Sterne — the  starling  that  cried,  "I 
can't  get  out!     I  can't  get  out!"     Among  the 
subjects  that  he  refused  to  speak  of  or  to  discuss 
was  one  which  for  a  long  time  greatly  interested 
me,  and  interests  me  still — I  refer  to  Socialism. 
But  then  Socialism,  after  all,  is  nothing  but  a 
more  or  less  definitive  view  of  a  definite  organ- 
isation with  perfectly  recognised  ends,  and  he 
saw   no   possibility  of   any  organisation   doing 
away  with  the  things  he  loathed.     That  is  to  say, 
he  was  truly  hopeless,  most  truly  pessimistic. 
He  w^as  a  sensuous  and  not  a  scientific  thinker,  j 
and  to  get  on  with  him  for  any  length  of  time  it  j 
was  necessary  for  me  to  suppress  three-quarters  ] 
of  the  things  I  wished  to  speak  about.     He  was  \ 
a  strange  egoist,  though  truly  the  hateful  world  \ 
was  not  his  own.     It  appeared  to  me  that  he  i 
prayed,  or  strove,  for  the  power  to  ignore  it.     It  j 
is  for  this  reason  that  it  seems  to  me  now  that  all  I 
his  so-called  social  work  and  analysis  were  in 
the  nature  of  an  alien  tour  de  force.     He  bent 
his  intellect  in  that  direction,  and  succeeded  even 
against  his   nature.     He  who   desired  to  be  a 
Bentley  or  a  Porson  wrote  bitterly  about  the 
slums  of  Tottenham  Court  Road.     With  Porson 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  135 

he  damned  the  nature  of  things,  and  wrote  beau- 
tifully about  them.  I  remember  on  one  occasion 
telling  him  of  a  piece  of  script  in  the  handwrit- 
ing of  the  great  surgeon,  John  Hunter,  which 
ran:  ^'Damn  civilisation!  It  makes  cats  eat 
their  kittens,  sows  eat  their  young,  and  women 
send  their  children  out  to  nurse."  I  think  that 
gave  him  more  appreciation  of  science  than  any- 
thing he  had  ever  heard.  For  it  looked  back 
into  the  past,  and  for  Henry  Maitland  the  past 
was  the  age  of  gold.  In  life,  as  he  had  to  live 
it,  it  was  impossible  to  ignore  the  horrors  of  the 
present  time.  He  found  it  easier  to  ignore  the 
horrors  of  the  past,  and  out  of  ancient  history  he 
made  his  great  romance,  which,  truly,  he  never 
wrote. 

It  is  a  curious  thing  that  a  man  who  was  thus 
so  essentially  romantic  should  have  been  mis- 
taken, not  without  great  reason,  for  a  realist. 
In  one  sense  he  was  a  realist,  but  this  was  the 
fatal  result  of  his  nature  and  his  circumstances. 
Had  he  lived  in  happier  surroundings,  still  writ- 
ing fiction,  I  am  assured  it  would  have  been  ro- 
mance. And  yet,  curiously  enough,  I  doubt  if 
any  of  his  ideas  concerning  women  were  at  all 
romantic.  His  disaster  with  his  first  wife  was 
due  to  early  and  unhappily  awakened  sex  feel- 
ing, but  I  think  he  believed  that  his  marrying 
her  was  due  to  his  desire  to  save  somebody  whom 


136  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

he  considered  to  be  naturally  a  beautiful  char- 
acter from  the  dunghill  in  which  he  found  her. 
This  poor  girl  was  his  first  belle  fleur.  In  all 
his  relations  with  women  it  seems  as  if  his  own 
personal  loneliness  was  the  dominating  factor. 
So  much  did  he  feel  these  things  that  it  was 
rarely  possible  to  discuss  them  with  him. 
Nevertheless  it  was  the  one  subject,  scientifically 
treated,  on  which  I  could  get  him  to  listen  to 
me.  In  the  first  five  years  of  my  literary  ap- 
prenticeship I  began  a  book,  which  is  still  un- 
finished, and  never  will  be  finished,  called  ''So- 
cial Pathology."  So  far  as  it  dealt  with  sex 
and. sex  deprivation,  he  was  much  interested  in 
it.  In  all  his  books  there  is  to  be  found  the  mis- 
ery of  the  man  who  lives  alone  and  yet  cannot 
live  alone.  I  do  not  think  that  in  any  book  but 
''The  Unchosen,"  he  ever  made  a  study  of  that 
from  the  woman's  side.  But  it  is  curiously  char- 
acteristic of  his  sex  view  that  the  chief  feminine 
character  of  that  book  apparently  knew  not  love 
even  when  she  thought  that  she  knew  it,  but  was 
only  aware  of  awakened  senses. 

One  might  have  imagined,  considering  his 
early  experiences,  that  he  would  have  led  the 
ordinary  life  of  man,  and  associated,  if  only  oc- 
casionally, with  women  of  the  mercenary  type. 
This,  I  am  wholly  convinced,  was  a  thing  he 
never  did,  though  I  possess  one  poem  which  im- 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  137 

plies  the  possible  occurrence  of  such  a  passing 
liaison.  There  was,  however,  another  incident 
in  his  life  which  occurred  not  long  before  I  went 
to  America.  He  was  then  living  in  one  room  in 
the  house  of  a  journeyman  bookbinder.  On  sev- 
eral occasions  when  I  visited  him  there  I  saw 
his  landlady,  a  young  and  not  unpleasing  woman, 
who  seemed  to  take  great  interest  in  him,  and 
did  her  very  best  to  make  him  comfortable  in 
narrow,  almost  impossible,  surroundings.  Her 
husband,  a  man  a  great  deal  older  than  herself, 
drank,  and  not  infrequently  ill-treated  her. 
This  was  not  wholly  Maitland's  story,  for  I  saw 
the  man  myself,  as  well  as  his  wife.  It  appears 
she  went  for  sympathy  to  her  lodger,  and  he  told 
her  something  of  his  own  troubles.  Their  com- 
mon griefs  threw  them  together.  She  was  ob- 
viously of  more  than  the  usual  intelligence  of 
her  class.  It  appeared  that  she  desired  to  learn 
French,  or  made  Maitland  believe  so;  my  own 
view  being  that  she  desired  his  company.  The 
result  of  this  was  only  natural,  and  soon  after- 
wards Maitland  was  obliged  to  leave  the  house 
owing  to  the  jealousy  of  her  husband,  who  for 
many  years  had  already  been  suspicious  of  her 
without  any  cause.  But  this  affair  was  only 
passing.  He  took  other  rooms,  and  so  far  as  I 
know  never  saw  her  again. 

While  I  was  in  America  he  was  living  at  7  K, 


138  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

and  in  that  gloomy  flat  there  was  an  affair  of 
another  order,  an  incident  not  without  many 
parallels  in  the  lives  of  poor  artists  and  writers. 
It  seems  that  a  certain  lady  not  without  im- 
portance in  society,  the  wife  of  a  rich  husband, 
wrote  to  him  about  one  of  his  books,  and  hav- 
ing got  into  correspondence  with  him  allowed 
her  curiosity  to  overcome  her  discretion.  She 
visited  him  very  often  in  his  chambers,  and 
though  he  told  me  but  little  I  gathered  what  the 
result  was.  Oddly  enough,  by  a  curious  chain  of 
reasoning  and  coincidence,  I  afterwards  discov- 
ered this  woman's  name,  which  I  shall,  of  course, 
suppress.  So  far  as  I  am  aware  these  were  the 
only  two  romantic  or  quasi-romantic  incidents  in 
Maitland's  life  until  towards  the  end  of  it. 
When  I  came  back  from  America  he  certainly 
had  no  mistress,  and  beyond  an  occasional  visit 
from  the  sons  of  Harold  Edgeworth,  he  prac- 
tically received  no  one  but  myself.  His  poverty 
forbade  him  entertaining  any  but  one  of  his  fel- 
lows who  was  as  poor  as  he  was,  and  the  few 
acquaintances  he  had  once  met  in  better  sur- 
roundings than  his  own  gradually  drifted  away  j 
from  him,  or  died  as  Cotter  Morison  died.  Al-  I 
though  he  spoke  so  very  little  about  these  matters  | 
of  personal  loneliness  and  deprivation  I  was  yet  l 
conscious  from  the  general  tenor  of  his  writing  | 
and  an  occasional  dropped  word,  how  bitterly  he 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  139 

felt  it  personally.  It  had  rejoiced  my  unre- 
generate  heart  in  America  to  learn  that  he  was 
not  entirely  without  feminine  companionship  at 
a  time  when  the  horror  of  his  life  was  only  par- 
tially mitigated  by  the  preference  of  his  mad  and 
wretched  wife  for  the  dens  and  slums  of  the  New 
Cut.  This  woman  of  the  upper  classes  had  come 
to  him  like  a  star,  and  had  been  a  lamp  in  his 
darkness.  I  wonder  if  she  still  retains  within 
her  heart  some  memories  of  those  hours. 

I  have  not  been  able  to  discover  whether  it  is 
true,  as  has  been  said,  that  some  of  Maitland's 
ancestors  were  originally  German.  He  himself 
thought  this  was  so,  without  having  anything 
definite  that  I  remember  to  go  upon.  If  it  were 
true  I  wonder  whether  it  was  his  Teutonic  an- 
cestry which  made  him  turn  with  a  certain  joy 
to  the  German  ideal  of  woman,  that  of  the  haus- 
frau.  If  little  or  nothing  were  known  about 
him,  or  only  so  much  as  those  know  who  have 
already  written  of  him,  it  might,  in  some  ways, 
be  possible  to  reconstruct  him  by  a  process  of 
deductive  analysis,  by  what  the  school  logicians 
call  the  regressus  a  principiatis  ad  principia. 
This  is  always  a  fascinating  mental  exercise,  and 
indeed  I  think,  with  a  very  little  light  on  Mait- 
land's life,  it  should  not  have  been  difficult  for 
some  to  build  up  a  picture  not  unlike  the  man. 
For  instance,  no  one  with  a  gleam  of  intelligence, 


140  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

whether  a  critic  or  not,  could  read  some  portions 
of  the  chapter  in  "Victorian  Novelists"  on 
"Women  and  Dickens"  without  coming  to  the 
inevitable  conclusion  that  Maitland's  fortune 
with  regard  to  the  women  with  whom  he  had 
been  thrown  in  contact  must  have  been  most  la- 
mentably unfortunate.  Although  Dickens  drew 
certain  offensive  women  with  almost  unequalled 
power,  he  treats  them  so  that  one  becomes  oblivi- 
ous of  their  very  offensiveness,  as  Maitland  points 
out.  Maitland's  own  commentary  on  such 
women  is  ten  thousand  times  more  bitter,  and  it 
is  felt,  not  observed,  as  in  Dickens'  books.  He 
calls  them  "these  remarkable  creatures,"  and  de- 
clares they  belong  mostly  to  one  rank  of  life,  the 
lower  middle  class.  "In  general  their  circum- 
stances are  comfortable  ....  nothing  is  asked 
of  them  but  a  quiet  and  amiable  discharge  of 
their  household  duties;  they  are  treated  by  their 
male  kindred  with  great,  often  with  extraordi- 
nary consideration.  Yet  their  characteristic  is 
acidity  of  temper  and  boundless  licence  of  quer- 
ulous or  insulting  talk.  The  real  business  of 
their  lives  is  to  make  all  about  them  as  uncom- 
fortable as  they  can.  Invariably,  they  are  unin- 
telligent and  untaught;  very  often  they  are 
fragrantly  imbecile.  Their  very  virtues  (if 
such  persons  can  be  said  to  have  any)  become  a 
scourge.     In  the  highways  and  byways  of  life, 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  141 

by  the  fireside,  and  in  the  bed-chamber,  their 
voices  shrill  upon  the  terrified  ear."  He  adds 
that  no  historical  investigation'  is  needed  to 
ascertain  the  truthfulness  of  these  presentments. 
Indeed  Maitland  required  no  historical  investi- 
gation, he  had  his  personal  experience  to  go 
upon  ;  but  this,  indeed,  is  obvious.  Nevertheless 
one  cannot  help  feeling  in  reading  this  appalling 
indictment,  that  something  might  be  said  upon 
the  other  side,  and  that  Maitland's  attitude  v^as 
so  essentially  male  as  to  vitiate  many  of  his  con- 
clusions. 

A  few  pages  further  on  in  this  book  he  says: 
^'Another  man,  obtaining  his  release  from  these 
depths,  would  have  turned  away  in  loathing; 
Dickens  found  therein  matter  for  his  mirth, 
material  for  his  art."  But  Maitland  knew  that 
Dickens  had  not  suffered  in  the  way  he  himself 
had  done.  Thus  it  was  that  he  rejoiced  in  the 
punishment  which  Mrs.  Joe  Gargery  received. 
Maitland  writes:  "Mrs.  Joe  Gargery  shall  be 
brought  to  quietness ;  but  how?  By  a  half-mur- 
derous blow  on  the  back  of  her  head,  from  which 
she  will  never  recover.  Dickens  understood 
by  this  time  that  there  is  no  other  efficacious  way 
with  these  ornaments  of  their  sex." 

Having  spoken  of  Dickens  it  may  be  as  well  to 
dispose  of  him,  with  regard  to  Maitland,  in  this 
particular  chapter.     It  seems  to  be  commonly 


142  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

thought  that  Maitland  wrote  his  book  about  the 
Victorian  novelists  not  only  with  the  sympathy 
which  he  expressed,  but  with  considerable  joy  in 
the  actual  work.  This  is  not  true,  for  he  re- 
garded it  essentially  as  a  pot-boiler,  and  did  it 
purely  for  the  money.  By  some  strange  kink  in 
his  mind  he  chose  to  do  it  in  Italy,  far  from  any 
reference  library.  He  wrote:  "My  little  nov- 
elist book  has  to  be  written  before  Christmas,  and 
to  do  this  I  must  get  settled  at  the  earliest  pos- 
sible date  in  a  quiet  north  Italian  town.  I  think 
I  shall  choose  Siena."  On  what  principle  he 
decided  to  choose  a  quiet  north  Italian  town  to 
write  a  book  about  Victorian  novelists  I  have 
never  been  able  to  determine.  It  was  certainly 
a  very  curious  proceeding,  especially  as  he  had 
no  overwhelming  love  of  North  Italy,  which  was 
for  him  the  Italy  of  the  Renaissance.  As  I  have 
said,  he  actually  disliked  the  work,  and  had  no 
desire  to  do  it,  well  as  it  was  done.  It  is,  how- 
ever, curious,  to  me,  in  considering  this  book, 
to  find  that  neither  he  nor  any  other  critic  of 
Dickens  that  I  have  ever  read  seems  to  give  a 
satisfactory  explanation  of  the  great,  and  at  times 
overwhelming,  attraction  that  Dickens  has  for 
many.  And  yet  on  more  than  one  occasion  I 
discussed  Dickens  with  him,  and  in  a  great  meas- 
ure he  agreed  with  a  theory  I  put  forth  with 
some  confidence.     I  think  it  still  worth  consider- 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  143 

ing.  For  me  the  great  charm  of  Dickens  lies 
not  wholly  in  his  humour  or  even  greatly  in  his 
humour.  It  is  not  found  in  his  characterisation, 
nor  in  his  underlying  philosophy  of  revolt,  al- 
though almost  every  w^riter  of  consequence  is  a 
revolutionist.  It  results  purely  and  simply 
from  what  the  critics  of  the  allied  art  of  painting 
describe  as  "quality."  This  is  a  word  exceed- 
ingly difficult  to  define.  It  implies  more  or  less 
the  characteristic  way  in  which  paint  is  put  upon 
the  canvas.  A  picture  may  be  practically  worth- 
less from  the  point  of  view  of  subject  or  compo- 
sition, it  may  even  be  comparatively  poor  in  col- 
ouring, and  yet  it  may  have  an  extreme  interest 
of  surface.  One  finds,  I  think,  the  same  thing 
in  Dickens'  writings.  His  page  is  full.  It  is 
fuller  than  the  page  of  any  other  English  writer. 
There  are,  so  to  speak,  on  any  given  page  by  any 
man  a  certain  number  of  intellectual  and  emo- 
tional stimuli.  Dickens'  page  is  full  of  these 
stimuli  to  a  most  extreme  degree.  It  is  like  a 
small  mosaic,  and  yet  clear.  It  has  cross  mean- 
ings, cross  lights,  reflections,  suggestions.  Com- 
pare a  page  of  Dickens  with  a  page,  say,  of 
Thackeray.  Take  a  pencil  and  write  down  the 
number  of  mental  suggestions  given  by  a  sen- 
tence of  Thackeray.  Take,  again,  a  sentence  of 
Dickens,  and  see  how  many  more  there  are  to  be 
found.     It  is  this  tremendous  and  overflowing 


144  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

fulness  which  really  constitutes  Dickens'  great 
and  peculiar  power. 

But  all  this  is  anticipation.     Not  yet  was  he  to 

write  of  Dickens,  Thackeray,  and  the  Brontes, 

for  much  was  to  befall  him  before  he  went  to 

Italy  again.     He  was  once  more  alone,  and  I 

think  I  knew  that  this  loneliness  would  not  last 

for  long.     I  have  often  regretted  that  I  did  not 

foresee  what  I  might  have  foreseen  if  I  had  con-    1 

sidered  the  man  and  his  circumstances  with  the   \ 

same  fulness  which  comes  to  one  in  later  years    | 

after  Fate  has  wrought  itself  out.     Had  I  known    i 

all  that  I  might  have  known,  or  done  all  that  I    | 

might  have  done,  I  could  perhaps  have  saved   \ 

him  from  something  even  worse  than  his  first  : 

marriage.     Yet,  after  all,  I  was  a  poor  and  busy  | 

man,  and  while  living  in  Chelsea  had  many  com-  | 

panions,  some  of  them  men  who  have  now  made  \ 

a  great  name  in  the  world  of  Art.     The  very  na-  \ 

ture  of  Maitland  and  his  work,  the  dreadful  con-  ; 

centration  he  required  to  do  something  which  ; 

was,  as  I  insist  again,  alien  from  his  true  nature,  ; 

forbade  my  seeing  him  very  often,  or  even  often  ; 

enough  to  gather  from  his  reticence  what  was  j 

really  in  his  mind.     Had  I  gone  to  see  him  with-  • 

out  any  warning,  it  would,  I  knew,  have  utterly  | 

destroyed  his  whole  day's  work.     But  this  soli-  i 

tude,    this    enforced    and    appalling   loneliness,  j 

which  seemed  to  him  necessary  for  work  if  he  j 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  145 

was  to  live,  ate  into  him  deeply.  It  destroyed 
his  nerve  and  what  judgment  he  ever  had  which, 
heaven  knows,  was  little  enough.  What  it  means 
to  some  men  to  live  in  such  solitude  only  those 
who  know  can  tell,  and  they  never  tell.  To 
Maitland,  with  his  sensual  and  sensuous  nature, 
it  was  most  utter  damnation. 

By  now  he  had  come  out  of  the  pit  of  his  first 
marriage,  and  gradually  the  horrors  he  had 
passed  through  became  dim  to  his  eyes.  They 
were  like  a  badly  toned  photograph,  and  faded. 
I  did  foresee  that  something  would  happen 
sooner  or  later  to  alter  the  way  in  which  he  lived, 
but  I  know  I  did  not  foresee,  and  could  not  have 
foreseen  or  imagined  what  was  actually  coming, 
for  no  one  could  have  prophesied  it.  It  was  ab- 
surd, impossible,  monstrous,  and  almost  bathos. 
And  yet  it  fits  in  with  the  character  of  the  man  as 
it  had  been  distorted  by  circumstance.  One  Sun' 
day  when  I  visited  him  he  told  me,  with  a  strange 
mixture  of  abruptness  and  hesitation,  that  he  had 
made  the  acquaintance  of  a  girl  in  the  Maryle- 
bone  road.  Naturally  enough  I  thought  at  first 
that  his  resolution  and  his  habits  had  broken 
down  and  that  he  had  picked  up  some  prostitute 
of  the  neighbourhood.  But  it  turned  out  that 
the  girl  was  ^'respectable."  He  said  to  me:  "I 
could  stand  it  no  longer,  so  I  rushed  out  and 
spoke  to  the  very  first  woman  I  came  across." 


146  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE  [ 

It  was  an  unhappy  inspiration  of  the  desperate,  | 
and  was  the  first  act  of  a  prolonged  drama  of  pain 
and  misery.     It  took  me  some  time  and  many 
questions  to  find  out  what  this  meant,  and  what 
it  was  to  lead  to,  but  presently  he  replied  sullenly 
that  he  proposed  to  marry  the  girl  if  she  would 
marry  him.     On  hearing  this,  I  fell  into  silence 
and  we  sat  for  a  long  time  without  speaking. 
Knowing  him  as  I  did,  it  was  yet  a  great  shock 
to  me.     For  I  would  rather  have  seen  him  in  the 
physical  clutches  of  the  biggest  harpy  in  the 
Strand — knowing  that  such  now  could  not  long 
hold  him.     I  had  done  my  best,  as  a  mere  boy, 
to  prevent  him  marrying  his  first  wife,  and  had 
failed  with  the  most  disastrous  results.     I  now 
determined  to  stop  this  marriage  if  I  could.     I 
ventured  to  remind  him  of  the  past,  and  the  part 
I  had  played  in  it  when  I  implored  him  to  have 
no  more  to  do  with  Marian  Hilton  long  before 
he  married  her.     I  told  him  once  more,  trying 
to  renew  it  in  him,  of  the  relief  it  had  been  when 
his  first  wife  died,  but  nothing  that  I  could  say  J 
seemed  to  move,  or  even  to  offend  him.     His  / 
mind  recognised  the  truth  of  everything,  but  hisii 
body  meant  to  have  its  way.     He  was  quiet,  sul-  £ 
len,  set — even  when  I  told  him  that  he  would  re-.j 
pent  it  most  bitterly.     The  only  thing  I  couldfi 
at  last  get  him  to  agree  to  was  that  he  would  take 
no  irrevocable  step  for  a  week. 


j 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  147 

I  asked  him  questions  about  the  girl.  He 
admitted  that  he  did  not  love  her  in  any  sense  of 
the  word  love.  He  admitted  that  she  had  no 
great  pov^ers  of  attraction,  that  she  seemed  to 
possess  no  particularly  obvious  intellect.  She 
had  received  his  advances  in  the  street  in  the  way 
that  such  girls,  whose  courtship  is  traditionally 
carried  on  in  the  open  thoroughfare,  do  receive 
them.  But  when  he  asked  her  to  visit  him  in  his 
chambers  she  replied  to  that  invitation  with  all 
the  obvious  suspicion  of  a  lower-class  girl  from 
whom  no  sex  secrets  were  hidden.  From  the 
very  start  the  whole  affair  seemed  hopeless,  pre- 
posterous, intolerable,  and  I  went  away  from  him 
in  despair.  It  was  a  strange  thing  that  Maitland 
did  not  seem  to  know  what  love  was.  If  I  have 
not  before  this  said  something  about  his  essential 
lack  of  real  passion  in  his  dealings  with  women 
it  must  be  said  now.  Of  course,  it  is  quite  obvi- 
ous that  he  had  a  boyish  kind  of  passion  for 
Marian  Hilton,  but  it  was  certainly  not  that  kind 
of  passion  which  mostly  keeps  boys  innocent. 
Indeed  those  calf  loves  which  afflict  youths  are 
at  the  same  time  a  great  help  to  them,  for  a  boy 
is  really  as  naturally  coy  as  any  maiden.  If  by 
any  chance  Maitland,  instead  of  coming  into 
the  hands  of  a  poor  girl  of  the  streets  of  Moor- 
hampton,  had  fallen  in  love  with  some  young 
girl   of   decent  character   and   upbringing,   his 


148  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

passions  would  not  have  been  so  fatally  roused.  ; 
I  think  it  was  probably  the  whole  root  of  his  j 
disaster  that  this  should  have  occurred  at  all.  j 
Possibly  it  was  the  horror  and  rage  and  anger  ^ 
connected  with  this  first  affair,  combined  with' 
the  fact  that  it  became  actually  sensual,  which 
prevented  him  having  afterwards  what  one  might  : 
without  priggishness  describe  as  a  pure  passion.  \ 
At  any  rate  I  never  saw  any  signs  of  his  being 
capable  of  the  overwhelming  passion  which  ; 
might  under  other  circumstances  drive  a  man  > 
down  to  hell,  or  raise  him  to  heaven.  To  my  | 
mind  all  his  books  betray  an  extreme  lack  of  this.  .| 
His  characters  in  all  their  love-affairs  are  essen-  j 
tially  too  reasonable.  A  man  wishes  to  marry  a  - 
girl,  not  because  he  desires  her  simply  and  over-  \ 
whelmingly,  but  because  she  is  a  fitting  person,  ; 
or  the  kind  of  woman  of  whom  he  has  been  able  ; 
to  build  up  certain  ideas  which  suit  his  mind,  i 
In  fact  the  love  of  George  Hardy  for  Isabel  in  ] 
"The  Exile"  is  somewhat  typical  of  the  whole  ] 
attitude  he  had  towards  affairs  of  passion.  Then  ] 
again  in  "Paternoster  Row"  there  is  the  suicide  j 
of  Gifford  which  throws  a  very  curious  light  on  ■ 
Maitland's  nature.  Apparently  Gifford  did  not  j 
commit  suicide  because  of  his  failure,  or  because  j 
he  was  half  starving,  it  was  because  he  was  | 
weakly  desirous  of  a  woman  like  Anne — not  nee-  1 
essarily  Anne  herself.     In  Maitland's  phrase,  he  j 


I 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  149 

desired  her  to  complete  his  manhood,  to  my  mind 
the  most  ridiculous  way  of  putting  the  affair. 
It  is  in  this,  I  think,  that  Maitland  showed  his 
essential  lack  of  knowledge  of  the  other  sex.  A 
man  does  not  captivate  women  by  going  to  them 
and  explaining,  with  more  or  less  periphrasis, 
that  they  are  required  to  complete  his  manhood, 
that  he  feels  a  rather  frustrate  male  individual 
without  them.  And  if  he  has  these  ideas  at  the 
back  of  his  head  and  goes  courting,  the  result  is 
hardly  likely  to  be  successful.  Maitland  never 
understood  the  passion  in  the  man  that  sweeps  a 
woman  ofif  her  feet.  One  finds  this  lack  in  all 
his  men  who  live  celibate  lives.  They  suffer 
physically,  or  they  suffer  to  a  certain  degree  from 
loneliness,  but  one  never  feels  that  only  one 
woman  could  cure  their  pain,  or  alleviate  their 
desolation.  At  times  Maitland  seemed,  as  it 
were,  to  be  in  love  with  the  sex  but  not  with  the 
woman.  Of  course  he  had  a  bitter  hatred  of 
the  general  prejudices  of  morality,  a  thing  which 
was  only  natural  to  any  one  who  had  lived  his 
life  and  thought  what  he  thought.  It  is  a  curi- 
ous thing  to  note  that  his  favourite  poem  in  the 
whole  English  language  was  perhaps  the  least 
likely  one  that  could  be  picked  out.  This  was 
Browning's  '^Statue  and  the  Bust,"  which  is  cer- 
tainly of  a  teaching  not  Puritan  in  its  essence. 
The  Puritan  ideal  Maitland  loathed  with  a  fer- 


150  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

vour  which  produced  the  nearest  I  have  ever  seen 
in  him  to  actual  rage  and  madness.  He  roared 
against  it  if  he  did  not  scoff.  He  sometimes 
quoted  the  well-known  lines  from  the  unknown 
Brathwait: 

'Where  I  saw  a  Purltane  one 
Hanging  of  his  Cat  on  Monday, 
For  killing  of  a  Mouse  on  Sonday." 

I  remember  very  well  his  taking  down  Browning 
when  I  was  with  him  one  afternoon  at  7  K.  He 
read  a  great  portion  of  ''The  Statue  and  the 
Bust"  out  aloud,  and  we  discussed  it  afterwards, 
of  course  pointing  out  to  each  other  with  em- 
phasis its  actual  teaching,  its  loathing  of  futility. 
It  teaches  that  the  two  people  who  loved  each 
other  but  never  achieved  love  were  two  weak- 
lings, who  ought  to  have  acted,  and  should  not 
have  allowed  themselves  to  be  conquered  by  the 
lordly  husband.  Maitland  said:  ''Those  peo- 
ple who  buy  Browning  and  think  they  under- 
stand it — oh,  if  they  really  knew  what  he  meant 
they  would  pick  him  up  with  a  pair  of  tongs, 
and  take  him  out,  and  burn  him  in  their  back 
yards — in  their  back  yards!"  It  strikes  one  that 
Maitland,  in  his  haste,  seemed  to  imagine  that 
the  kind  of  bourgeois  or  bourgeoise  whom  he  im- 
agined thus  destroying  poor  Browning  with  the 
aid  of  tongs,  possessed  such  things  as  back  yards, 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  151 

and,  perhaps,  frequented  them  on  Sunday  after- 
noons. But  he  had  lived  for  so  many  years  in 
houses  which  had  not  a  garden,  or  anything  but 
a  small,  damp  yard  behind,  that  he  began  to 
think,  possibly,  that  all  houses  were  alike.  I 
roared  with  laughter  at  his  notion  of  what  these 
prosperous  Puritans  would  do.  I  had  a  picture 
in  my  mind  of  some  well-dressed  woman  of  the 
upper  middle-class  bringing  out  ^'The  Statue 
and  the  Bust"  with  a  pair  of  tongs,  and  burning 
it  in  some  small  and  horrible  back  yard  belong- 
ing to  a  house  in  the  slums  between  Tottenham 
Court  Road  and  Fitzroy  Square.  And  yet,  al- 
though he  understood  Browning's  sermon  against 
the  passive  futility  of  these  weak  and  unfortunate 
lovers  he  could  not,  I  think,  have  understood 
wholly,  or  in  anything  but  a  literary  sense  the 
enormous  power  of  passion  which  Browning 
possessed.  This  lack  in  him  is  one  of  the  keys 
to  his  character,  and  it  unlocks  much.  When  I 
left  him  after  he  told  me  about  this  new  affair, 
I  went  back  to  my  own  rooms  and  sat  thinking 
it  over,  wondering  if  it  were  possible  even  now  to 
do  anything  to  save  him  from  his  own  nature, 
and  the  catastrophe  his  nature  was  preparing. 
Without  having  seen  the  girl  I  felt  sure  that  it 
would  be  a  catastrophe,  for  I  knew  him  too  well. 
Nevertheless  on  reflecting  over  the  matter  it  did 
seem  to  me  that  there  was  one  possible  chance  of 


152  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

saving  him  from  himself.  It  was  a  very  unlikely- 
thing  that  I  should  succeed,  but  at  any  rate  I 
could  try. 

I  have  said  that  we  rarely  spoke  of  his  early 
life,  and  never  of  what  had  happened  in  Moor- 
hampton.  Nevertheless  I  was,  of  course,  aware 
that  it  dominated  the  whole  of  his  outlook  and 
all  of  his  thoughts  in  any  way  connected  with 
ordinary  social  life,  especially  with  regard  to  in- 
tercourse with  those  who  might  know  something 
about  his  early  career.  At  this  time  I  do  not 
think  that  he  actually  blamed  himself  much  for 
what  had  happened.  Men  die  many  times  in 
life  and  are  born  again,  and  by  this  time  he  must 
have  looked  on  the  errant  youth  who  had  been 
himself  as  little  more  than  an  ancestor.  He  him- 
self had  died  and  risen  again,  and  if  he  was  not 
the  man  he  might  have  been,  he  was  certainly 
not  the  man  he  had  been.  Nevertheless  he  was 
perpetually  alive  to  what  other  people  might 
possibly  think  of  him.  I  believe  that  the  real 
reason  for  his  almost  rigid  seclusion  from  so- 
ciety was  that  very  natural  fear  that  some  brute, 
and  he  knew  only  too  well  that  there  are  such 
brutes,  might  suddenly  and  unexpectedly  expose 
his  ancient  history.  It  is  true  that  even  in  our 
society  in  England,  which  is  not  famous  all  the 
world  over  for  tact,  it  was  not  very  likely  to 
happen.     Nevertheless  the  bare  possibility  that 


I 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  153 

it  might  occur  absolutely  dominated  him.  It 
requires  very  little  sympathy  or  understanding 
of  his  character  to  see  that  this  must  have  been 
so.  No  doubt  it  was  mainly  from  this  cause  that 
he  considered  he  had  no  right  to  approach 
women  of  his  own  class,  seeing  that  he  had  de- 
classed himself,  without  telling  the  whole  truth. 
But  this  was  quite  impossible  for  him  to  do,  and 
I  knew  it.  In  some  cases  it  would  have  been 
wise,  in  some  unwise,  but  Henry  Maitland  was 
unable  to  do  such  a  thing.  The  result  was  this 
sudden  revolt,  and  the  madness  which  led  him 
to  speak  to  this  girl  of  the  Marylebone  Road, 
whom  I  had  not  yet  met  but  whom  I  pictured, 
not  inadequately,  in  my  mind.  At  the  first 
glance  it  seemed  that  nothing  could  possibly  be 
done,  that  the  man  must  be  left  to  ''dree  his 
weird,"  to  work  out  his  fate  and  accomplish  his 
destiny.  And  yet  I  lay  awake  for  a  very  long 
time  that  night  thinking  of  the  whole  situation, 
and  I  at  last  determined  to  take  a  step  on  his  be- 
half which,  at  any  rate,  had  the  merit  of  some 
originality  and  courage. 

Years  ago  in  Moorhampton,  when  he  was  a 
boy,  before  the  great  disaster  came,  Maitland 
had  visited  my  uncle's  house,  and  had  obviously 
pleased  every  one  he  met  there.  He  was  bright, 
not  bad  looking,  very  cheerful  and  enthusiastic, 
and  few  that  met  him  did  not  like  him.     Among 


154  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

those  whose  acquaintance  he  made  at  that  house 
were  two  of  my  own  cousins.  In  later  years 
they  often  spoke  of  him  to  me,  even  although 
they  had  not  seen  him  since  he  was  a  boy  of 
seventeen.  I  now  went  to  both  of  them  and  told 
them  the  whole  afifair  in  confidence,  speaking 
quite  openly  of  his  character,  and  the  impossi- 
bility he  discovered  within  himself  of  living  in 
the  desolation  which  fate  had  brought  upon  him. 
They  understood  his  character,  and  were  ac- 
quainted with  his  reputation.  He  was  a  man  of 
genius,  if  not  a  man  of  great  genius,  and  occupied 
a  certain  position  in  literature  which  would  one 
day,  we  all  felt  assured,  be  still  a  greater  position. 
They  were  obviously  exceedingly  sorry  for  him, 
and  not  the  less  sorry  when  I  told  them  of  the 
straits  in  which  he  sometimes  found  himself. 
Nevertheless  it  seemed  to  me,  as  I  explained  to 
them,  that  if  he  had  been  lucky  enough  to  marry 
some  one  in  sympathy  with  him  and  his  work, 
some  one  able  to  help  in  a  little  way  to  push  him 
forward  on  the  lines  on  which  he  might  have 
attained  success,  there  was  yet  great  hope  for  him 
even  in  finance,  or  so  I  believed.  Then  I  asked 
them  whether  it  would  not  be  possible  to  stop 
this  proposed  outrageous  marriage,  a  thing 
which  seemed  to  me  utterly  unnatural.  They 
were,  however,  unable  to  make  any  suggestion, 
and  certainly  did  not  follow  what  was  in  my 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         155 

mind.  Then  I  opened  what  I  had  to  say,  and 
asked  them  abruptly  if  it  were  not  possible  for 
one  of  them  to  consider  whether  she  would 
marry  him  if  the  present  affair  could  be  brought 
decently  to  an  end.  They  were  both  educated 
women,  and  knew  at  least  two  foreign  languages. 
They  were  accustomed  to  books,  and  appreciated 
his  work. 

No  doubt  my  proposal  sounded  absurd,  un- 
conventional, and  perhaps  not  a  little  horrifying. 
Nevertheless  when  I  have  had  anything  to  do  in 
life  I  have  not  been  accustomed  to  let  convention 
stand  in  my  way.  Such  marriages  have  been  ar- 
ranged and  have  not  been  unsuccessful.  There 
was,  I  thought,  a  real  possibility  of  such  a  mar- 
riage as  I  proposed  being  anything  but  a  failure. 
Our  conversation  ended  at  last  in  both  of  them 
undertaking  to  consider  the  matter  if,  after  meet- 
ing Maitland  again,  they  still  remained  of  the 
same  mind,  and  if  he  found  that  such  a  step  was 
possible.  I  have  often  wondered  since  whether 
any  situation  exactly  like  this  ever  occurred  be- 
fore. I  own  that  I  found  it  somewhat  interest- 
ing, and  when  at  last  I  went  back  to  Maitland  I 
felt  entitled  to  tell  him  that  he  could  do  much 
better  than  marrying  an  unknown  girl  of  the 
lower  classes  whom  he  had  accosted  in  the  streets 
in  desperation.  But  he  received  what  I  had  to 
say  in  a  very  curious  manner.     It  seemed  to  de- 


156  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

press  him  profoundly.  Naturally  enough,  I  did 
not  tell  him  the  names  of  those  who  were  pre- 
pared to  make  his  acquaintance,  but  I  did 
tell  him  that  I  had  been  to  a  lady  who  had  once 
met  him  and  greatly  admired  his  work,  who 
would  be  ready  to  consider  the  possibility  of  her 
becoming  his  wife  if  on  meeting  once  again  they 
proved  sympathetic.  He  shook  his  head  grimly, 
and,  after  a  long  silence,  he  told  me  that  he  had 
not  kept  his  word,  and  that  he  had  asked  Ada 
Brent  to  marry  him.  He  had,  he  said,  gone  too 
far  to  withdraw.  i 

There  is  such  a  thing  in  life  as  the  tyranny  of  | 
honour,  and  personally  I  cared  very  little  for  this 
point  of  honour  when  I  thought  of  his  future. 
It  was  not  as  if  this  girl's  affections  were  in  any 
way  engaged.  If  they  had  been  I  would  have 
kept  silence,  bitterly  as  I  regretted  the  whole  af- 
fair. She  was  curious  about  him,  and  that  was 
all.  It  would  do  her  no  harm  to  lose  him,  and, 
indeed,  as  the  event  proved,  it  would  have  been 
better  if  she  had  not  married  at  all.  Therefore 
I  begged  him  to  shut  up  the  flat  and  leave  Lon- 
don at  once.  I  even  offered  to  try  and  find  the 
money  for  him  to  do  so.  But,  like  all  weak  peo- 
ple, he  was  peculiarly  obstinate,  and  nothing  that 
I  could  urge  had  the  least  effect  upon  him.  I 
have  often  thought  it  was  his  one  great  failure 
in  rectitude  which  occurred  at  Moorhampton 


I 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  157 

that  made  him  infinitely  more  tenacious  of  doing 
nothing  which  might  seem  in  any  way  dishon- 
ourable, however  remotely.  I  did  not  succeed 
in  moving  him,  with  whatever  arguments  I  plied 
him,  and  the  only  satisfaction  I  got  out  of  it  was 
the  sense  that  he  knew  I  was  most  deeply  inter- 
ested in  him,  and  had  done  everything,  even 
much  more  than  might  have  been  expected,  to 
save  him  from  what  I  thought  must  lead  to  ir- 
reparable misery.  Certainly  the  whole  incident 
was  remarkable.  There  was,  perhaps,  a  little 
air  of  curiously  polite  comedy  about  it,  and  yet 
it  was  the  prelude  to  a  tragedy. 

It  was  soon  after  this,  in  fact  it  was  on  the 
following  Sunday,  that  I  made  the  acquaintance 
of  the  young  woman  who  was  to  be  his  second 
wife,  to  bear  his  children,  to  torture  him  for 
years,  to  drive  him  almost  mad,  and  once  more 
make  a  financial  slave  of  him.  We  three  met  in 
the  gloomy  sitting-room  at  7  K.  My  first  im- 
pression of  this  girl  was  more  unfavourable  than 
I  had  expected.  She  was  the  daughter  of  a 
small  tradesman  but  little  removed  from  an  arti- 
san, and  she  looked  it.  In  the  marriage  certifi- 
cate her  father  is  described  as  a  carver,  for  what 
reason  I  am  unable  to  determine,  for  I  have  a 
very  distinct  recollection  that  Maitland  told  me 
he  was  a  bootmaker,  probably  even  a  cobbler. 
I  disliked  the  young  woman  at  first  sight,  and 


158  HENRY  MAITLAND 

never  got  over  my  early  impression.     From  the 
very  beginning  it  seemed  impossible  that  she 
could  ever  become  in  any  remote  degree  what  he 
might  justifiably  have  asked  for  in  a  wife.     Yet 
she   was   not  wholly   disagreeable    in    appear- 
ance.    She  was  of  medium  height  and  somewhat 
dark.     She  had  not,  however,  the  least  pretence 
to  such  beauty  as  one  might  hope  to  find  even  in 
a  slave  of  the  kitchen.     She  possessed  neither  | 
face  nor  figure,  nor  a  sweet  voice,  nor  any  charm  j 
— she  was  just  a  female.     And  this  was  she  that  j 
the  most  fastidious  man  in  many  ways,  that  I  \ 
knew,  was  about  to  marry.     I  went  away  with  a  | 
sick  heart,  for  it  was  nothing  less  than  a  frightful  ": 
catastrophe,  and  I  had  to  stand  by  and  see  it  hap-  j 
pen.     He  married  her  on  March  20,  1891,  and  j 
went  to  live  near  Exeter. 


CHAPTER  VII 

FOR  many  months  after  he  left  London  I 
did  not  see  Maitland,  although  we  con- 
tinued to  correspond,  somewhat  irregu- 
larly. He  was  exceedingly  reticent  as  to  the 
results  of  his  marriage,  and  I  did  not  discover 
definitely  for  some  time  to  what  extent  it  was 
likely  to  prove  a  failure.  Indeed,  I  had  many 
things  to  do,  and  was  both  financially  and  in 
other  matters  in  a  parlous  condition.  In  some 
ways  it  was  a  relief  to  me  that  he  should  be  liv- 
ing in  the  country,  as  I  always  felt,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  a  certain  feeling  of  responsibility  with 
regard  to  him  when  he  was  close  at  hand.  Mar- 
riage always  takes  one's  friends  away  from  one, 
and  for  a  time  he  was  taken  from  me.  But  as  I 
am  not  anxious  to  write  in  great  detail  about  the 
more  sordid  facts  of  his  life,  especially  when 
they  do  not  throw  light  on  his  character,  I  am 
not  disturbed  at  knowing  little  of  the  earlier  days 
of  his  second  marriage.  The  results  are  suffi- 
cient, and  they  will  presently  appear.  For 
Maitland  remained  Maitland,  and  his  character 
did  not  alter  now.     So  I  may  return  for  a  little 

159 


160  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

while  to  matters  more  connected  with  his  literary 
life. 

I  have,  I  think,  before  this  endeavoured  to 
describe  or  suggest  his  personal  appearance,  but 
whenever  I  think  of  him  I  regret  deeply  that  no 
painter  ever  made  an  adequate  portrait  of  the 
man.     He    was    especially    interesting-looking, 
and   most   obviously   lovable   and   sympathetic 
when  any  of  his  feelings  were  roused.     His  grey  1 
eyes  were  very  bright  and  intelligent,  his  fea-  I 
tures  finely  cut,  and  at  times  he  was  almost  beau-  ! 
tiful;  although  his  skin  was  not  always  in  such  j 
a  good  condition  as  it  should  have  been,  and  he  ] 
was  always  very  badly  freckled.     For  those  who  ] 
have  never  seen  him  a  photograph  published  in  j 
a  dull  literary  journal,  which  is  now  defunct,  is  i 
certainly  the  most  adequate  and  satisfying  pre-  J 
sentment  of  him  in  existence.     On  a  close  in-  i 
spection  of  this  photograph  it  will  be  observed  j 
that  he  brushed  his  hair  straight  backward  from  • 
his  forehead  without  any  parting.     He  had  a 
curious  way  of  dressing  his  hair,  about  which  he  i 
was  very  particular.     It  was  very  fine  hair  of  a  ] 
brown  colour,  perhaps  of  a  rather  mousy  tint,  ] 
and  it  was  never  cut  except  at  the  ends  at  the  ^ 
nape  of  his  neck.     Whenever  he  washed  his  face  \ 
he  used  to  fasten  this  hair  back  with  an  elastic  , 
band  which  he  always  carried  in  his  waistcoat  i 
pocket.     On  some  occasions,  when  I  have  stayed  ! 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  161 

the  night  at  7  K  and  seen  him  at  his  toilette,  this 
elastic  band  gave  him  a  very  odd  appearance, 
almost  as  if  he  wore,  for  the  time  being,  a  very 
odd  halo;  but  as  his  hair  was  so  long  in  front  it 
would  otherwise  have  fallen  into  the  basin  of 
water.  He  told  me  that  once  in  Germany  a 
waiter  entered  the  room  while  he  was  washing 
his  face,  and  on  perceiving  this  peculiar  head- 
dress betrayed  signs  of  mixed  amusement  and 
alarm.  As  Maitland  said,  '^I  believe  he  thought 
I  was  mad.'' 

His  forehead  was  high,  his  head  exceedingly 
well  shaped  but  not  remarkably  large.  He  al- 
ways wore  a  moustache.  Considering  his  very 
sedentary  life  his  natural  physique  was  extremely 
good,  and  he  was  capable  of  walking  great  dis- 
tances if  he  were  put  to  it  and  was  in  condition. 
Seen  nude,  he  had  the  figure  of  a  possible  athlete. 
I  used  to  tell  him  that  he  might  be  an  exceedingly 
strong  man  if  he  cared  to  take  the  trouble  to  be- 
come one,  but  his  belief,  which  is  to  be  found 
expressed  in  one  passage  of  "The  Meditations," 
was  that  no  one  in  our  times  could  be  at  once  in- 
tellectually and  physically  at  his  best.  Indeed, 
he  had  in  a  way  a  peculiar  contempt  for  mere 
strength,  and  I  do  not  doubt  that  much  of  his 
later  bodily  weakness  and  illness  might  have  been 
avoided  if  he  had  thought  more  of  exercise  and 
open  air. 


I 
162  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

In  no  way  was  he  excessive,  in  spite  of  his 
jocular  pretence  of  a  monstrous  addiction  to 
^'strong  waters"  as  he  always  called  them.  He 
did  love  wine,  as  I  have  written,  but  he  loved  it 
with  discretion,  although  not  with  real  knowl- 
edge. It  was  a  case  of  passion  and  faith  with 
him.  I  could  imagine  that  in  some  previous  in- 
carnation— were  there  such  things  as  reincarna- 
tions— he  must  have  been  an  Italian  writer  of  the 
South  he  loved  so  well.  A  little  while  ago  I 
spoke  of  the  strange  absence  of  colour  in  his 
rooms.  On  rereading  "The  Meditations,"  I  find 
some  kind  of  an  explanation,  or  what  he  con- 
sidered an  explanation,  of  this  fact,  to  which  I 
myself  drew  his  attention.  He  seemed  to  imag- 
ine that  his  early  acquaintance  with  his  father's 
engravings  inspired  him  with  a  peculiar  love  of 
black  and  white.  More  probably  the  actual 
truth  is  that  his  father's  possible  love  of  colour 
had  never  been  developed  any  more  than  his 
son's. 

His  fantastic  attempts  at  times  to  make  one 
believe  that  he  was  a  great  drinker,  when  a  bottle 
of  poor  and  common  wine  served  him  and  me  for 
a  dinner  and  made  us  joyous,  were  no  more  true 
than  that  he  was  a  great  smoker.  He  had  a 
prodigious  big  pot  of  tobacco  in  his  rooms  in  the 
early  days,  a  pot  containing  some  form  of  mild 
returns  which  to  my  barbaric  taste  suggested 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  163 

nothing  so  much  as  hay  that  had  been  stored  next 
some  mild  tobacco.  It  was  one  of  my  grievances 
against  him  that  when  I  visited  his  rooms  hard 
up  for  tobacco,  a  thing  which  frequently  oc- 
curred in  those  days,  I  was  almost  unable  to  use 
his.  But  it  was  always  a  form  of  joke  with  him 
to  pretend  that  his  habits  were  monstrously  ex- 
cessive. As  I  have  said,  one  of  his  commonest 
forms  of  humour  was  exaggeration.  Many  peo- 
ple misunderstood  that  his  very  expressions  of 
despair  were  all  touched  with  a  grim  humour. 
Nevertheless  he  and  his  rooms  were  grim 
enough.  On  his  shelves  there  was  a  French 
book,  the  title  of  which  I  forget,  dealing  with- 
out any  reticence  with  the  lives  of  the  band  of 
young  French  writers  under  the  Second  Empire, 
who  perished  miserably  in  the  conditions  to 
which  they  were  exposed.  This  book  is  a  series 
of  short  and  bitter  biographies,  ending  for  the 
most  part  with,  ''mourut  a  Thopital,"  or  ^'brulait 
la  cervelle."  We  were  by  no  means  for  ever 
cheerful  in  these  times. 

I  do  not  think  I  have  said  very  much,  except 
by  bitter  implication,  of  his  financial  position,  or 
what  he  earned.  But  his  finances  were  a  part  of 
his  general  life's  tragedy.  There  is  a  passage 
somewhere  at  the  end  of  a  chapter  in  ^Tn  the 
Morning"  which  says:  "Put  money  in  thy 
purse;  and  again,  put  money  in  thy  purse;  for, 


164  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

as  the  world  is  ordered,  to  lack  current  coin  is  to 
lack  the  privileges  of  humanity,  and  indigence  is 
the  death  of  the  soul."     I  have  been  speaking 
wholly  in  vain  if  it  is  not  understood  that  he  was 
a  man  extremely  difficult  to  influence,  even  for 
his  own  good.     This  was  because  he  was  weak, 
and  his  weakness  came  out  with  most  exceeding 
force  in  all  his  dealings  with  publishers  and  edit- 
ors.    For  the  most  part  he  was  atrociously  paid, 
but  the  fact  remains  that  he  was  paid,  and  his 
perpetual  fear  was  that  his  books  would  presently 
be  refused,  and  that  he  would  get  no  one  to  take 
them  if  he  remonstrated  with  those  who  were  his 
taskmasters.     In  such  an  event  he  gloomily  an- 
ticipated, not  so  much  the  workhouse,  but  once 
more  a  cellar  off  the  Tottenham  Court  Road,  or 
some  low,  poverty-stricken  post  as  a  private  tutor 
or  the  usher  of  a  poor  school.     Sometimes  when 
we  were  together  he  used  to  talk  with  a  certain 
pathetic  jocosity,  or  even  jealousy,  of  Coleridge's 
luck  in  having  discovered  his  amiable  patron, 
Gillman.     He  did  not  imagine  that  nowadays 
any  Gillmans  were  to  be  found,  nor  do  I  think 
that  any  Gillman  would  have  found  Maitland 
possible.     One  night  after  we  had  been  talking 
about  Coleridge  and  Gillman  he  sat  down  and 
wrote  a  set  of  poor  enough  verses,  which  are  not 
without  humour,  and  certainly  highly  character- 
istic, that  ran  as  follows: 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  165 

THE  HUMBLE  ASPIRATION  OF  H.M., 
NOVELIST 

"  Hoc  erat  in  votls." 

Oh  could  I  encounter  a  Gillman, 

Who  would  board  me  and  lodge  me  for  aye, 

With  what  intellectual  skill,  man, 
My  life  should  be  frittered  away! 

What  visions  of  study  methodic 

My  leisurely  hours  would  beguile! — 
I  would  potter  with  details  prosodic, 

I  would  ponder  perfections  of  style. 

I  would  joke  in  a  vein  pessimistic 

At  all  the  disasters  of  earth ; 
I  would  trifle  with  schemes  socialistic, 

And  turn  over  matters  for  mirth. 

From  the  quiddities  quaint  of  Quintilian 

I  would  flit  to  the  latest  critiques ; — 
I  would  visit  the  London  Pavilion, 

And  magnify  lion-comiques. 

With  the  grim  ghastly  gaze  of  a  Gorgon 

I  would  cut  Hendersonian  bores — 
I  would  follow  the  ambulant  organ 

That  jingles  at  publicans'  doors. 

In  the  odorous  alleys  of  Wapping 
I  would  saunter  on  evenings  serene; 


166  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

When  the  dews  of  the  Sabbath  were  dropping 
You  would  find  me  on  Clerkenwell  Green. 

At  the  Hall  Scientific  of  Bradlaugh 

I  would  revel  In  atheist  rant, 
Or  enjoy  an  attack  on  some  bad  law 

By  the  notable  Mrs.  Besant. 

I  would  never  omit  an  oration 

Of  Cunnlnghame  Graham  or  Burns; 

And  the  Army  miscalled  of  Salvation 
Should  furnish  me  frolic  by  turns. 

Perchance  I  would  muse  o'er  a  mystic; 

Perchance  I  would  booze  at  a  bar; 
And  when  in  the  mind  journalistic 

I  would  read  the  'Tall  Mall"  and  the  "Star." 

Never  more  would  I  toll  with  my  quill,  man. 
Or  plead  for  the  publishers'  pay. — 

Oh  where  and  O  where  Is  the  Gillman, 
Who  will  lodge  me  and  board  me  for  aye? 

Now  as  to  his  actual  earnings.  His  first  book 
"Children  of  the  Dawn,"  was  published  by  Ham- 
erton's.  So  far  as  I  am  aware  it  brought  him  in 
nothing.  The  book,  naturally  enough,  was  a 
dead  failure;  nobody  perceived  its  promise,  and 
it  never  sold.  I  do  not  think  he  received  a  penny 
on  account  for  it.  He  got  little  more  for  "Out- 
side the  Pale,''  which  was  published  in  1884,  the 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         167 

year  I  went  to  America,  and  was  dedicated  to  me, 
as  the  initials  J.  C.  H.  on  the  dedication  page  of 
the  first  edition  testify.  At  that  time  I  still  re- 
tained in  signature  my  second  initial.  This 
book  was  published  by  Andrews  and  Company, 
and  it  was  through  it  that  he  first  made  acquaint- 
ance in  a  business  way  with  George  Meredith, 
then  quite  a  poor  man,  and  working  for  the  firm 
as  a  reader  just  before  he  went  to  Chapman  and 
Hall. 

In  "Outside  the  Pale,"  as  a  manuscript  there 
was  a  chapter,  or  part  of  a  chapter,  of  a  curi- 
ously romantic  kind.  It  was  some  such  theme 
as  that  which  I  myself  treated  in  a  romantic 
story  called  ''The  Purification."  Hilda  Moon, 
the  idealised  heroine  of  the  streets,  washed  her- 
self pure  of  her  sins  in  the  sea  at  midnight,  if  I 
remember  the  incident  rightly,  for  I  never  ac- 
tually read  it.  It  appears  that  George  Meredith 
was  much  taken  with  the  book,  but  found  his 
sense  of  fitness  outraged  by  the  introduction  of 
this  highly  romantic  incident.  It  seemed  out  of 
tone  with  the  remainder  of  the  book  and  the  way 
in  which  it  was  written.  He  begged  Maitland 
to  eliminate  it.  Now  as  a  rule  Maitland,  being 
a  young  writer,  naturally  objected  to  altering 
anything,  but  he  knew  that  Meredith  was  right. 
At  any  rate,  even  at  that  period,  the  older  man 
had  had  such  an  enormous  experience  that  Mait- 


168  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

land  accepted  his  opinion  and  acted  upon  it. 
He  told  me  that  George  Meredith  came  down- 
stairs with  him  into  the  street,  and  standing  on 
the  doorstep  once  more  reiterated  his  advice  as 
to  this  particular  passage.  He  said  in  the  pe- 
culiar way  so  characteristic  of  him,  ''My  dear 
sir,  I  beg  you  to  believe,  it  made  me  shiver!'' 
That  passage  is  missing  in  the  published  book. 
"Outside  the  Pale"  had  a  kind  of  succes 
d'estime.  Certain  people  read  it,  and  certain 
people  liked  it.  It  was  something  almost  fresh 
in  English.  Nevertheless  he  made  little  or  noth- 
ing out  of  it.  Few,  indeed,  were  those  who  made 
money  out  of  Andrews  and  Company  at  that 
time.  The  business  was  run  by  Harry  Andrews, 
known  in  the  trade  as  "the  liar,"  a  man  who 
notoriously  never  spoke  the  truth  if  a  lie  would 
bring  him  in  a  penny.  I  afterwards  published 
a  book  with  the  same  firm,  and  had  to  deal  with 
the  same  man.  After  "Outside  the  Pale"  came 
"Isabel,"  which,  as  I  have  said,  was  obviously 
written  under  the  influence  of  Tourgeniev.  So 
far  as  I  am  aware  this  influence  has  not  been 
noted,  even  by  so  acute  a  critic  as  Thomas  Sack- 
ville,  but  I  myself  was  at  that  time  a  great  reader 
of  Tourgeniev,  partly  owing  to  Maitland's  rec- 
ommendation and  insistence  upon  the  man,  and 
I  recognised  his  influence  at  once.     Maitland 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  169 

openly  acknowledged  it,  a  thing  no  writer  does 
without  very  strong  reason.  This  book,  of 
course,  was  not  a  success.  That,  I  believe,  was 
the  last  work  he  published  with  Andrews  and 
Company.  So  far  as  he  was  concerned  the  firm 
had  not  been  a  success.  He  was  still  compelled 
to  earn  his  bread  and  cheese  and  rent  by  teaching. 
Although  Tourgeniev  was  the  earliest  great 
influence  upon  Maitland,  his  influence  was  very 
largely  that  of  form.  So  far  as  feeling  was  con- 
cerned his  god  for  many  years  was  undoubtedly 
Dostoievsky.  That  Russian  writer  himself  suf- 
fered and  had  been  down  into  the  depths  like  the 
modern  writer  Gorki,  which  was  what  appealed 
to  Maitland.  Indeed  he  says  somewhere: 
''Dostoievsky,  a  poor  and  suffering  man,  gives 
us  with  immense  power  his  own  view  of  penury 
and  wretchedness."  It  was  Maitland  who  first 
introduced  ''Crime  and  Punishment,"  to  me. 
There  is  no  doubt,  when  one  comes  to  think  of  it 
seriously,  a  certain  likeness  between  the  modern 
Russian  school  and  Maitland's  work,  and  that 
likeness  is  perhaps  founded  on  something  deeper 
than  mere  community  of  subject  which  shows 
itself  here  and  there.  Perhaps  there  is  some- 
thing essentially  Slav-like  in  Maitland's  attitude 
to  life.  He  was  a  dreamer,  rebellious  and  un- 
able.    If,  indeed,  his  ancestry  was  partly  Teu- 


170  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

tonic,  he  might  have  been  originally  as  much 
Slav  as  German. 

In  1886,  while  I  v^as  still  in  America,  he  began 
^The  Mob."  At  that  time,  just  w^hen  he  had 
almost  done  the  first  two  volumes,  there  occurred 
the  Trafalgar  Square  Riots,  in  which  John 
Burns,  Hyndman,  and  Henry  Hyde  Champion, 
were  concerned.  Fool  as  Maitland  was  about 
his  own  affairs,  he  yet  saw  that  it  was  a  wonder- 
ful coincidence  from  his  point  of  view  that  he 
should  have  been  dealing  with  labour  matters 
and  the  nature  of  the  mob  at  this  juncture. 
Some  rare  inspiration  or  suggestion  led  him  to 
rush  down  with  the  first  two  volumes  to  Messrs. 
Miller  and  Company,  where  they  were  seen  by 
John  Glass,  who  said  to  him,  ''Give  us  the  rest 
at  once  and  we  will  begin  printing  it  now."  He 
went  home  and  wrote  the  third  volume  in  a  fort- 
night while  the  other  two  volumes  were  in  the 
press.  This  book  was  published  anonymously, 
as  it  was  thought,  naturally  enough,  that  this 
would  give  it  a  greater  chance  of  success.  It 
might  reasonably  be  attributed  to  any  one,  and 
Maitland's  name  at  that  time,  or  indeed  at  any 
time  afterwards,  was  very  little  help  towards 
financial  success.  Now  I  am  of  opinion,  speak- 
ing from  memory,  that  this  book  was  bought 
out  and  out  by  the  publishing  firm  for  fifty 
pounds.     To   a  young  writer  who  had  never 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  171 

made  so  much  fifty  pounds  was  a  large  sum.  In 
Maitland's  exaggerated  parlance  it  was  ''gross 
and  riotous  wealth." 

Having  succeeded  in  getting  hold  of  a' good 
firm  of  notable  and  well-known  publishers,  he 
dreaded  leaving  them,  even  though  he  very  soon 
discovered  that  fifty  pounds  for  a  long  three- 
volume  novel  was  most  miserable  pay.  That  he 
wrote  books  rapidly  at  times  was  no  guarantee 
that  he  would  always  write  them  as  rapidly. 
For  once  in  his  life  he  had  written  a  whole  vol- 
ume in  a  fortnight,  but  it  might  just  as  well  take 
him  many  months.  There  are,  indeed,  very  few 
of  his  books  of  which  most  of  the  first  volume 
was  not  destroyed,  rewritten,  and  sometimes  de- 
stroyed and  again  rewritten.  Nevertheless  he 
discovered  a  tremendous  reluctance  to  ask  for 
better  terms.  It  was  not  only  his  fear  of  return- 
ing to  the  old  irremediable  poverty  which  made 
him  dread  leaving  a  firm  who  were  not  all  they 
might  have  been,  but  he  was  cursed  with  a  most 
unnecessary  tenderness  for  them.  He  actually 
dreaded  hurting  the  feelings  of  a  publishing  firm 
which  had  naturally  all  the  qualities  and  defects 
of  a  corporation.  The  reason  that  he  did  at  last 
leave  this  particular  firm  was  rather  curious.  It 
shows  that  what  many  might  think  a  mere  coin- 
•cidence  may  prejudice  a  fair  man's  mind. 

As  I  have  said,  he  had  been  in  the  habit  of 


172  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

selling  his  books  outright  for  fifty  pounds. 
After  this  had  gone  on  for  many  books  I  sug- 
gested to  him,  as  everything  he  wrote  went  into 
several  editions  under  the  skilful  management 
of  the  firm,  that  it  might  be  as  well  to  sell  them 
the  first  edition  only  and  ask  for  a  royalty  on  the 
succeeding  ones.  Now  this  would  never  have 
occurred  to  him,  and  he  owned  that  it  was  a  good 
idea.  So  when  ''The  Flower,"  was  finished  he 
sold  the  first  edition  for  forty  pounds,  and  ar- 
ranged for  a  percentage  on  succeeding  editions. 
He  went  on  with  the  next  book  at  once.  Now 
as  it  happened,  curiously  enough,  there  was  no 
second  edition  of  "The  Flower"  called  for,  and 
this  so  disheartened  poor  Maitland  that  he  sold 
his  two  next  novels  outright  for  the  usual  sum. 
One  day  when  I  was  with  him  he  spoke  of  the 
bad  luck  of  ''The  Flower,"  which  seemed  to  him 
almost  inexplicable.  It  was  so  very  unlucky 
that  it  had  not  done  well,  for  the  loss  of  the  extra 
ten  pounds  was  not  easy  for  him  to  get  over  in 
his  perpetual  and  grinding  poverty.  When  we 
had  discussed  the  matter  he  determined  to  ask 
the  firm  what  they  would  give  him  for  all  further 
rights  in  the  book.  He  did  this,  and  they  were 
kind  enough  to  pay  the  sum  of  ten  pounds  for 
them,  making  up  the  old  price  of  fifty  pounds 
for  the  whole  book.  Then,  by  one  of  those 
chances  which  only  business  men  are  capable  of 


1 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  173 

thoroughly  appreciating,  a  demand  suddenly 
sprang  up  for  the  story  and  the  publishers  were 
enabled  to  bring  out  a  new  edition  at  once. 
Some  time  later  it  went  into  a  third  edition,  and, 
I  believe,  even  into  a  fourth.  Now  it  will  hardly 
be  credited  that  Maitland  was  very  sore  about 
this,  for  he  was  usually  a  very  just  man ;  and  when 
I  suggested,  for  the  hundredth  time  but  now  at 
the  psychological  moment,  that  the  firm  of  Bent 
and  Butler  who  were  then  publishing  for  me, 
might  give  him  very  good  terms,  he  actually  had 
the  courage  to  leave  his  own  publishers,  and 
never  went  back  to  them. 

I  have  insisted  time  and  again  upon  Mait- 
land's  weakness  and  his  inability  to  move. 
Nothing,  I  believe,  but  a  sense  of  rankling  in- 
justice would  have  made  him  move.  I  had  been 
trying  for  three  years  to  get  him  to  go  to  my  pub- 
lishing friends,  and  I  have  heard  his  conduct  in 
the  matter  described  as  obstinacy.  But  to  speak 
truly  it  was  sheer  weakness  and  nervousness. 
The  older  firm  at  any  rate  gave  him  fifty  pounds 
for  a  book,  and  they  were  wealthy  people,  likely 
to  last.  My  own  friends  were  new  men,  and  al- 
though they  gave  him  a  hundred  pounds  on  ac- 
count of  increasing  royalties,  it  was  conceivably 
possible  that  they  might  be  a  failure  and  pres- 
ently go  out  of  business.  His  notion  was  that 
the  firm  he  had  left  would  then  refuse  to  have 


174  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 


anything  more  to  do  with  him,  that  he  would  get 
no  other  firm  to  publish  his  work,  and  that  he 
would  be  thrown  back  into  the  ditch  from  which 
he  had  crawled  with  so  much  difficulty.  It  is 
an  odd  comment  on  himself  where  he  makes  one 
man  say  to  another  in  'Taternoster  Row"  :  ^'You 
are  the  kind  of  man  who  is  roused  by  necessity. 
I  am  overcome  by  it.  My  nature  is  feeble  and 
luxurious.  I  never  in  my  life  encountered  and 
overcame  a  practical  difficulty."  He  spoke 
afterwards  somewhat  too  bitterly  of  his  earlier 
publishing  experiences,  and  was  never  tired  of 
quoting  Mrs.  Gaskell  to  show  how  Charlotte 
Bronte  had  fared. 

In  ^'The  Meditations"  he  says:  'Think  of 
that  grey,  pinched  life,  the  latter  years  of  which 
would  have  been  so  brightened  had  Charlotte 
Bronte  received  but,  let  us  say,  one-third  of  what, 
in  the  same  space  of  time,  the  publisher  gained 
by  her  books.  I  know  all  about  this;  alas!  no 
man  better."  There  was  no  subject  on  which 
he  was  more  bitterly  vocal.  Mr.  Jones-Brown, 
the  senior  partner  of  Messrs.  Miller  and  Com- 
pany, I  knew  myself,  for  after  I  wrote  ''The 
Wake  of  the  Sun,"  it  was  read  by  Glass  and  sold 
to  them  for  fifty  pounds.  When  this  bargain 
was  finally  struck  Mr.  Jones-Brown  said  to  me: 
"Now,  Mr.  H.,  as  the  business  is  all  done,  would 
you  mind  telling  me  quite  frankly  to  what  ex- 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  175 

tent  this  book  of  yours  is  true?"  I  replied: 
"It  is  as  true  in  every  detail  as  it  can  possibly 
be."  ''Then  you  mean  to  say,"  he  asked,  "that 
you  actually  did  starve  as  you  relate?"  I  said: 
"Certainly  I  did,  and  I  might  have  made  it  a 
deal  blacker  if  I  had  chosen."  He  fell  into  a 
momentary  silent  reverie  and  shaking  his  head, 
murmured:  "Ah,  hunger  is  a  dreadful  thing; 
— I  once  w^ent  w^ithout  dinner  myself!"  This 
was  a  favourite  story  of  Henry  Maitland's.  It 
w^as  so  characteristic  of  the  class  he  chiefly 
loathed.  Those  who  have  gathered  by  now  what 
his  satiric  and  ironic  tendencies  were,  can  im- 
agine his  bitter,  and  at  the  same  time  uproar- 
iously jocular  comments  on  such  a  statement. 
For  he  was  the  man  who  had  stood  cursing  out- 
side a  cookshop  without  even  a  penny  to  satisfy 
his  raging  hunger,  as  he  truly  relates  under  cover 
of  "The  Meditations." 

It  is  an  odd,  and  perhaps  even  remarkable 
fact,  that  the  man  who  had  suffered  in  this  way, 
and  was  so  wonderfully  conscious  of  the  ab- 
surdities and  monstrosities  of  our  present  social 
system,  working  by  the  pressure  of  mere  eco- 
nomics, should  have  regarded  all  kinds  of  re- 
form not  merely  without  hope,  but  with  an  act- 
ual terror.  He  had  once,  as  he  owned,  been 
touched  by  Socialism,  probably  of  a  purely 
academic  kind ;  and  yet,  when  he  was  afterwards 


176  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

withdrawn  from  such  stimuli  as  had  influenced 
him  to  think  for  once  in  terms  of  sociology,  he 
went  back  to  his  more  natural  depairing  con- 
servative frame  of  mind.  He  lived  in  the  past, 
and  was  conscious  every  day  that  something  in 
the  past  that  he  loved  was  dying  and  must  van- 
ish. No  form  of  future  civilisation,  whatever 
it  might  be,  w^hich  was  gained  by  means  im- 
plying the  destruction  of  what  he  chiefly  loved, 
could  ever  appeal  to  him.  He  was  not  even 
able  to  believe  that  the  gross  and  partial  edu- 
cation of  the  populace  was  better  than  no  edu- 
cation at  all,  in  that  it  must  some  day  inevitably 
lead  to  better  education  and  a  finer  type  of  so- 
ciety. It  was  for  that  reason  that  he  was  a  Con- 
servative. But  he  was  the  kind  of  Conservative 
who  w^ould  now  be  repudiated  by  those  who 
call  themselves  such,  except  perhaps  in  some  be- 
lated and  befogged  country  house. 

A  non-combative  Tory  seems  a  contradiction 
in  words,  but  Maitland's  loathing  of  disturbance 
in  any  form,  or  of  any  solution  of  any  question 
by  means  other  than  the  criticism  of  the  Pure 
Reason,  was  most  extreme.  As  for  his  feelings 
towards  the  Empire  and  all  that  it  implied,  that 
is  best  put  in  a  few  words  he  wrote  to  me  about 
my  novel  "In  the  Sun" :  "Yes,  this  is  good,  but 
you  know  that  I  loathe  the  Empire,  and  that 
India  and  Africa  are  abomination  to  me."     To 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         177 

anticipate  as  I  tell  his  story  I  may  quote  again  on 
the  same  point  from  a  letter  written  to  me  in 
later  years  when  he  was  in  Paris:  ^'I  am  very 
seriously  thinking  of  trying  to  send  my  boy  to 
some  part  of  the  world  where  there  is  at  least 
a  chance  of  his  growing  up  an  honest  farmer 
without  obvious  risk  of  his  having  to  face  the 
slavery  of  military  service.  I  would  greatly 
rather  never  see  him  again  than  foresee  his 
marching  in  ranks ;  butchering,  or  to  be  butch- 
ered." 

This  implies,  of  course,  as  I  have  said  before, 
that  he  failed  for  ever  to  grasp  the  world  as  it 
was.  He  clung  passionately  and  with  revolt  to 
his  own  ideas  of  what  it  ought  to  be,  and  pro- 
tested with  a  curious  feeble  violence  against  the 
actual  world  as  he  would  not  see  it.  It  is  a 
wonder  that  he  did  any  work  at  all.  If  he  had 
had  fifty  pounds  a  year  of  his  own  he  would  have 
retreated  into  a  cottage  and  asphyxiated  himself 
with  books. 

I  have  often  thought  that  the  most  painful 
thing  in  all  his  work  was  what  he  insisted  on  so 
often  in  "Paternoster  Row"  with  regard  to  the 
poor  novelist  there  depicted.  The  man  was  al- 
ways destroying  commenced  work.  Once  he 
speaks  about  "writing  a  page  or  two  of  manu- 
script daily,  with  several  holocausts  to  retard 
him."     Within  my  certain  knowledge  this  hap- 


178  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE  j 

pened  scores  of  times  to  Maitland.  He  de- 
stroyed a  quarter  of  a  volume,  half  a  volume, 
three  quarters  of  a  volume,  a  whole  volume,  and 
even  more,  time  and  time  again.  He  did  this,  to 
my  mind,  because  he  fancied  nervously  that  he 
must  v^rite,  that  he  had  to  w^rite,  and  began 
without  adequate  preparation.  It  became  ab- 
solutely tragic,  for  he  commenced  work  know- 
ing that  he  would  destroy  it,  and  knowing  the 
pain  such  destruction  would  cost  him,  when  a 
little  rest  might  have  enabled  him  to  begin  cheer- 
fully with  a  fresh  mind.  I  used  to  suggest  this 
to  him,  but  it  was  entirely  useless.  He  would 
begin,  and  destroy,  and  begin  again,  and  then 
only  partially  satisfy  himself  at  last  when  he 
was  in  a  state  of  financial  desperation,  with  the 
ditch  or  the  workhouse  in  front  of  him. 

In  this  he  never  seemed  to  learn  by  experi- 
ence. It  was  a  curious  futility,  which  was  all 
the  odder  because  he  was  so  peculiarly  conscious 
of  a  certain  kind  of  futility  exhibited  by  our 
friend  Schmidt.  He  used  to  write  to  Maitland 
at  least  a  dozen  times  a  year  from  Potsdam. 
These  letters  were  all  almost  invariably  read 
to  me.  They  aflorded  Maitland  extraordinary 
amusement  and  real  pleasure,  and  yet  great  pain. 
Schmidt  used  to  begin  the  letter  with  some- 
thing like  this:  'T  have  been  spending  the  last 
month  or  two  in  deep  meditation  on  the  work 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  179 

which  it  lies  in  my  power  to  do.  I  have  now 
discovered  that  I  was  not  meant  to  write  fiction. 
I  am  therefore  putting  it  resolutely  aside,  and 
am  turning  to  history,  to  which  I  shall  hence- 
forward devote  my  life."  About  two  months 
later  Maitland  would  read  me  a  portion  of  a 
letter  which  began:  ^'I  have  been  much 
troubled  these  last  two  months,  and  have  been 
considering  my  own  position  and  my  own  en- 
dowments with  the  greatest  interest.  I  find  that 
I  have  been  mistaken  in  thinking  that  I  had 
any  powers  which  would  enable  me  to  write  his- 
tory in  a  satisfactory  manner.  I  see  that  I  am 
essentially  a  philosopher.  Henceforth  I  shall 
devote  myself  to  philosophy."  Again,  a  month 
or  two  after,  there  would  come  a  letter  from 
him,  making  another  statement  as  if  he  had 
never  made  one  before:  ^'I  am  glad' to  say  that 
I  have  at  last  discovered  my  own  line.  After 
much  thought  I  am  putting  aside  philosophy. 
Henceforward  I  devote  myself  to  fiction." 
This  kind  of  thing  occurred  not  once  but  twenty 
or  thirty  times,  and  the  German  for  ever  wrote 
as  if  he  had  never  written  anything  before  with 
regard  to  his  own  powers  and  capabilities.  One 
is  reminded  forcibly  of  a  similar  case  in  Eng- 
land, that  of  J.  K.  Stephen. 
i  As  I  have  been  speaking  of  ^'Paternoster 
Row,"  it  is  very  interesting  to  observe  that  Mait- 


180  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE  | 

land  was  frequently  writing  most  directly  of 
himself  in  that  book.  It  is  curious  that  in  this, 
one  of  his  most  successful  novels,  he  should  have 
recognised  his  own  real  limitations.  He  says 
that  '^no  native  impulse  had  directed  him  to 
novel-writing.  His  intellectual  temper  was 
that  of  the  student,  the  scholar,  but  strongly 
blended  with  a  love  of  independence  which  had 
always  made  him  think  with  detestation  of  a 
teacher's  life."  He  goes  on  to  speak  of  the 
stories  which  his  hero  wrote,  ''scraps  of  imma- 
ture psychology,  the  last  thing  a  magazine  would 
accept  from  an  unknown  man."  It  may  be  that 
he  was  thinking  here  of  some  of  his  own  short 
stories,  for  which  I  was  truly  responsible.  Year 
after  year  I  suggested  that  he  should  do  some, 
as  they  were,  on  the  whole,  the  easiest  way  of 
making  a  little  money.  Naturally  I  had  amaz- 
ing trouble  with  him  because  it  was  a  new  line, 
but  I  returned  to  the  charge  in  season  and  out 
of  season,  every  Sunday  and  every  w^eek-day  that 
I  saw  him,  and  every  time  I  wrote.  We  were 
both  perfectly  conscious  that  he  had  not  the  art 
of  writing  dramatic  short  stories  which  were  es- 
sentially popular.  There  is  no  doubt  that  he 
did  not  possess  this  faculty.  When  one  goes 
through  his  shorter  work  one  discovers  few  in- 
deed which  are  stories  or  properly  related  to  the 
conte.     They  are,  indeed,  often  scraps  of  psy- 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  181 

chology,  sometimes  perhaps  a  little  crude,  but 
the  crudeness  is  mostly  in  the  construction. 
They  are  in  fact  rather  possible  passages  from  a 
book  than  short  stories.  Nevertheless  he  did 
fairly  well  with  these  when  he  worked  with 
an  agent,  which  he  did  finally  and  at  last  on 
continued  pressure  from  me.  I  notice,  how- 
ever, that  in  his  published  volumes  of  short 
stories  there  are  several  missing  which  I  should 
like  to  see  again.  I  do  not  know  whether  they 
are  good,  but  two  or  three  that  I  remember 
vaguely  were  published,  I  believe,  in  the  old 
^'Temple  Bar."  One  was  a  story  about  a  don- 
key, which  I  entirely  forget,  and  another  was 
called  "Mr.  Why."  It  was  about  a  poor  man, 
not  wholly  sane,  who  lived  in  one  room  and  left 
all  that  that  room  contained  to  some  one  else 
upon  his  death.  On  casual  search  it  seemed  that 
the  room  contained  nothing,  but  the  heir  or 
heiress  discovered  at  last  on  the  top  of  an  old 
cupbo'ard  Why's  name  written  large  in  piled 
half-crowns. 

It  may  have  been  noticed  by  some  that  he 
spoke  in  the  little  "Gillman"  set  of  verses  which 
I  have  quoted,  of  "Hendersonian  bores."  This 
perhaps  requires  comment.  For  one  who  loved 
his  Rabelais  and  the  free-spoken  classics  of  our 
own  tongue,  Maitland  had  an  extreme  purity  of 
thought  and  speech,  a  thing  which  one  might 


182  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE  | 

not,  in  some  ways,  have  looked  for.     No  one,  I 
think,  would  have  dared  to  tell  him  a  gross  story, 
which  did  not  possess  remarkable  wit  or  liter- 
ary merit,  more  than  once.     His  reception  of 
such  tales  was  never  cordial,  and  I  remember 
his  peculiar  and  astounding  indignation  at  one 
incident.     Somehow  or  another  he  had  become 
acquainted  with  an  East  End  clergyman  named 
Henderson.     This    Henderson   had,    I   believe, 
read  'The  Under  World,"  or  one  of  the  books 
dealing  with  the  kind  of  parishioner  that  he  was 
acquainted  with,  and  had  written  to  Maitland. 
In  a  way  they  became  friends,  or  at  any  rate 
acquaintances,  for  the  clergyman  too  was  a  pe- 
culiarly lonely  man.     He  occasionally  came  to 
7  K,  and  I  myself  met  him  there.     He  was  a 
man  wholly  misplaced,  in  fact  he  was  an  abso- 
lute atheist.     Still,  he  had  a  cure  of  souls  some- 
where the  other  side  of  the  Tower,  and  laboured, 
as  I  understood,  not  unfaithfully.    He  frequently 
discussed  his  mental  point  of  view  with  Mait- 
land and  often  used  to  write  to  him.     By  some 
native  kink  in  his  mind  he  used  to  put  into  these 
letters  indecent  words.     I  suppose  he  thought 
it  was   a   mere   outspoken   literary   habit.     As 
a  matter  of  fact  this  enraged  Maitland  so  fu- 
riously that  he  brought  the  letters  to  me,  and 
showing  them  demanded  my  opinion  as  to  what 
he  should  do.     He  said:     'This  kind  of  con- 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  183 

duct  is  outrageous!  What  am  I  to  do  about 
it?''  Now,  it  never  occurred  to  Maitland  in  a 
matter  like  this,  or  indeed  in  any  matter,  to  be 
absolutely  outspoken  and  straightforward.  He 
was  always  so  afraid  of  hurting  people's  feel- 
ings. I  said:  "It  is  perfectly  obvious  what  to 
do.  My  good  man,  if  you  don't  like  it,  write 
and  tell  him  that  you  don't."  This  was  to  him 
a  perfectly  impossible  solution  of  a  very  great 
difficulty.  How  it  was  solved  I  do  not  exactly 
remember,  but  I  do  know  that  we  afterwards 
saw  very  little  of  Mr.  Henderson,  who  is  em- 
balmed, like  a  poor  fly,  in  the  "Gillman"  poem. 

It  was  characteristic,  and  one  of  the  causes  of 
his  continued  disastrous  troubles,  that  Maitland 
was  incapable  of  being  abruptly  or  strenuously 
straightforward.  A  direct  ''No,"  or  'This  shall 
not  be  done,"  seemed  to  him,  no  doubt,  to  invite 
argument  and  struggle,  the  one  thing  he  invaria- 
bly procured  for  himself  by  invariably  avoid- 
ing it. 

"Paternoster  Row,"  was  written,  if  I  remem- 
ber rightly,  partly  in  1890,  and  finished  in  1891, 
in  which  year  it  was  published.  It  is  an  odd 
thing  to  think  of  that  he  was  married  to  his 
second  wife  in  March  1891,  shortly  before  this 
book  came  out.  In  the  third  volume  there  is 
practically  a  strange  and  bitter,  and  very  re- 
markable, forecast  of  the  result  of  that  marriage. 


184  HENRY  MAITLAND 

showing  that  whilst  Maitland's  instincts  and  im- 
pulses ran  away  with  him,  his  intellect  was  yet 
clear  and  cold.     It  is  the  passage  where  the 
hero  suggests  that  he  should  have  married  some 
simple,  kind-hearted  work-girl.     He  says,  ''We 
should  have  lived  in  a  couple  of  poor  rooms  some- 
where, and — we  should  have  loved  each  other." 
Whereupon  Gifford — here  Maitland's  intellect 
— exclaims  upon  him  for  a  shameless  idealist, 
and  sketches,  most  truly  the  likely  issue  of  such 
a  marriage,  given  Maitland  or  Reardon.     He 
says :     "To  begin  with,  the  girl  would  have  mar- 
ried you  in  firm  persuasion  that  you  were  a 
'gentleman'  in  temporary  difficulties,  and  that 
before  long  you  would  have  plenty  of  money  to 
dispose    of.     Disappointed    in    this    hope,    she 
would  have  grown  sharp-tempered,  querulous, 
selfish.     All  your  endeavours  to  make  her  under- 
stand you  w^ould  only  have  resulted  in  widening 
the  impassable  gulf.     She  would  have  miscon- 
strued your  every  sentence,  found  food  for  sus- 
picion in  every  harmless  joke,  tormented  you 
with  the  vulgarest  forms  of  jealousy.     The  ef- 
fect upon  your  nature  would  have  been  degrad- 
ing."    Never  was  anything  more  true. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

WHATEVER  kind  of  disaster  his  mar- 
riage was  to  be  for  Maitland,  there  is 
no  doubt  that  it  was  for  me  also  some- 
thing in  the  nature  of  a  catastrophe.  There  are 
marriages  and  marriages.  By  some  of  them  a 
man's  friend  gains,  and  by  others  he  loses,  and 
they  are  the  more  frequent,  for  it  is  one  of  the 
curiosities  of  human  life  that  a  man  rarely  finds 
his  friend's  wife  sympathetic.  As  it  was,  I  knew 
that  in  a  sense  I  had  now  lost  Henry  Maitland, 
or  had  partially  lost  him,  to  say  the  least  of  it. 
Unfair  as  it  was  to  the  woman,  I  felt  very  bit- 
ter against  her,  and  he  knew  well  what  I  felt. 
Thinking  of  her  as  I  did,  anything  like  free  hu- 
man intercourse  with  his  new  household  would 
be  impossible,  unless,  indeed,  the  affair  turned 
out  other  than  I  expected.  And  then  he  had 
left  London  and  gone  to  his  beloved  Devonshire. 
How  much  he  loved  it  those  who  have  read  ^'The 
Meditations"  can  tell,  for  all  that  is  said  there 
about  that  county  was  very  sincere,  as  I  can 
vouch  for.  Born  himself  in  a  grim  part  of 
Yorkshire,  and  brought  up  in  Mirefields  and 

I  185 


i 


186  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

Moorhampton,  that  rainy  and  gloomy  city  of  the 
north,  he  loved  the  sweet  southern  county.    And 
yet  it  is  curious  to  recognise  what  a  strange  pas- 
sion was  his  for  London.     He  had  something 
of  the  same  passion  for  it  as  Johnson  had,  al- 
though the  centre  of  London  for  him  was  not 
Fleet  Street  but  the  British  Museum  and  its 
great   library.     He  wrote   once   to   his   doctor 
friend:     ''I  dare  not  settle  far  from  London,  as 
it  means  ill-health  to  me  to  be  out  of  reach  of 
the    literary   Vorld' — a   small   world   enough, 
truly."     But,  of  course,  it  was  most  extraordi- 
narily his  world.     He  was  a  natural  bookworm 
compelled  to  spin  fiction.     And  yet  he  did  love 
the   country,   though  he   now  found  no   peace 
there.     With  his  wife  peace  was  impossible,  and 
this  I  soon  learnt  from  little  things  that  he  wrote  I 
to  me,  though  he  was  for  the  first  few  months  ! 
of  his  marriage  exceedingly  delicate  on  this  sub-  i 
ject,   as  if  he  were  willing  to  give  her  every  | 
possible  chance.     I  was  only  down  in  Devon-  j 
shire  once  while  he  was  there  with  his  wife.     I 
went  a  little  trip  in  a  steamship  to  Dartmouth, 
entering  its  narrow  and  somewhat  hazardous 
harbour  in  the  middle  of  the  great  blizzard  ! 
which  that  year  overwhelmed  the  south  of  Eng- 
land, and  especially  the  south  of  Devon,  in  the  ; 
heaviest  snow  drifts.     When  I  did  at  last  get  5 
away  from  Dartmouth,  I  found  things  obviously  j 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  187 

not  all  they  should  be,  though  very  little  was 
said  about  it  between  us.  I  remember  we  went 
out  for  a  walk  together,  going  through  paths 
cut  in  snow  drifts  twelve  or  even  fifteen  feet  in 
depth.  Though  such  things  had  been  a  common 
part  of  some  of  my  own  experiences  they  were 
wonderfully  new  to  Maitland,  and  made  him 
for  a  time  curiously  exhilarated.  I  did  not  stay 
long  in  Devon,  nor,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  did  he. 
For  though  he  had  gone  there  meaning  to  set- 
tle, he  found  the  lack  of  the  British  Museum 
and  his  literary  world  too  much  for  him,  and 
besides  that  his  wife,  a  girl  of  the  London  streets 
and  squares,  loathed  the  country,  and  whined  in 
her  characteristic  manner  about  its  infinite  dul- 
ness.  Thus  it  was  that  he  soon  left  the  west  and 
took  a  small  house  in  Ewell,  about  which  he 
wrote  me  constant  jeremiads. 

He  believed,  with  no  rare  ignorance,  as  those 
who  are  acquainted  with  the  methods  of  the  old 
cathedral  builders  will  know,  that  all  honest 
work  had  been  done  of  old,  that  all  old  builders 
were  honourable  men,  and  that  modern  work 
was  essentially  unsound.  He  had  never  learned 
that  the  first  question  the  instructed  ask  the  at- 
tendant verger  on  entering  a  cathedral  is: 
^When  did  the  tower  fall  down?"  It  rarely 
happens  that  one  is  not  instantly  given  a  date, 
not  always  very  long  after  that  particular  tower 


188  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 


was  completed.     I   remember  that  it  annoyed 
him  very  much  when  I  proved  to  him  by  docu- 
mentary evidence  that  a  great  portion  of  the 
work  in  Peterborough  Cathedral  was  of  the  most 
shocking   and   scandalous   description.     Never-  \ 
theless  these  facts  do  not  excuse  the  modern  jerry-  j 
builder,  and  the  condition  of  his  house  was  one,  j 
though  only  one,  of  the  perpetual  annoyances  he  ■ 
had  to  encounter.  ^ 

But,  after  all,  though  pipes  break  and  the  roof 
leaks,  that  is  nothing  if  peace  dwells  in  a  house,  j 
There  could  be  no  peace  in  Maitland's  house,  j 
for  his  wife  had  neither  peace  nor  any  under-  ! 
standing.  Naturally  enough  she  was  an  unedu-  ■ 
cated  woman.  She  had  read  nothing  but  what 
such  people  read.  It  is  true  she  did  not  speak  ; 
badly.  For  some  reason  which  I  cannot  under-  | 
stand  she  was  not  wholly  without  aspirates.  • 
Nevertheless  many  of  her  locutions  were  vul-^ 
gar,  and  she  had  no  natural  refinement.  This,  ; 
I  am  sure,  would  have  mattered  little,  and  per-  ' 
haps  nothing,  if  she  had  been  a  simple  house-  ; 
wife,  some  actual  creature  of  the  kitchen  like  | 
Rousseau's  Therese.  As  I  have  said,  I  think  ■ 
that  Maitland  was  really  incapable  of  a  great  j 
passion,  and  I  am  sure  that  he  would  have  put  ' 
up  with  the  merest  haus-frau,  if  she  had  known  ! 
her  work  and  possessed  her  patient  soul  in  quiet 
without  any  lamentations.     If  there  was  any  la-  i 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  189 

meriting  to  be  done  Maitland  himself  might 
have  done  it  in  choice  terms  not  without  hu- 
mour. And  indeed  he  did  lament,  and  not 
without  cause.  On  my  first  visit  to  Ewell  after 
his  return  from  Devon  I  again  met  Mrs.  Mait- 
land. She  made  me  exceedingly  uneasy,  both 
personally,  as  I  had  no  sympathy  for  her,  and 
also  out  of  fear  for  his  future.  It  did  not  take 
me  long  to  discover  that  they  were  then  living 
on  the  verge  of  a  daily  quarrel,  that  a  dispute 
was  for  ever  imminent,  and  that  she  frequently 
broke  out  into  actual  violence  and  the  smashing 
of  crockery.  While  I  was  with  them  she  per- 
petually made  whining  and  complaining  re- 
marks to  me  about  him  in  his  very  presence. 
She  said:  ^'Henry  does  not  like  the  way  I  do 
this,  or  the  way  I  say  that."  She  asked  thus  for 
my  sympathy,  casting  bitter  looks  at  her  hus- 
band. On  one  occasion  she  even  abused  him  to 
my  face,  and  afterwards  I  heard  her  anger  in  the 
passage  outside,  so  that  I  actually  hated  her  and 
found  it  very  hard  to  be  civil. 

By  this  time  I  had  established  a  habit  of  never 
spending  any  time  in  the  company  of  folks  who 
neither  pleased  nor  interested  me.  I  commend 
this  custom  to  any  one  who  has  any  work  to  do 

i  in  the  world.     Thus  my  forthcoming  refusal  to 
see  any  more  of  her  was  anticipated  by  Mait- 

,,  land,  who  had  a  powerful  intuition  of  the  feel- 


190  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 


ings  I  entertained  for  his  wife.  In  fact,  things 
soon  became  so  bad  that  he  found  it  necessary  j 
to  speak  to  me  on  the  subject,  as  it  was  soon  j 
nearly  impossible  for  any  one  to  enter  his  house  ! 
for  fear  of  an  exhibition  of  rage,  or  even  of  pos-  ; 
sible  incivility  to  the  guest  himself.  As  he  said,  \ 
she  developed  the  temper  of  a  devil,  and  began  j 
to  make  his  life  not  less  wretched,  though  it  | 
was  in  another  way,  than  the  poor  creature  had^j 
done  who  was  now  in  her  grave.  Naturally,  | 
however,  as  we  had  been  together  so  much,  I  I 
could  not  and  would  not  give  up  seeing  him.  ! 
But  we  had  to  meet  at  the  station,  and  going  to  i 
the  hotel  would  sit  in  the  smoking-room  to  have  , 
our  talk.  These  talks  were  now  not  wholly  of  \ 
books  or  of  our  work,  but  often  of  his  miseries.  ' 
One  day  when  I  found  him  especially  depressed  ■ 
he  complained  that  it  was  almost  impossible  for  \ 
him  to  get  sufficient  peace  to  do  any  of  his  work.  I 
On  hearing  this  the  notion  came  to  me  that,  i 
though  I  had  been  unable  to  prevent  him  marry-  ; 
ing  this  woman,  I  might  at  any  rate  make  the  \ 
suggestion  that  he  should  take  his  courage  in  j 
both  his  hands  and  leave  her.  But  I  was  in  no  r 
hurry  to  put  this  into  his  head  so  long  as  there  ! 
seemed  any  possibility  of  some  kind  of  peace  ; 
being  established.  However,  she  grew  worse  , 
daily,  or  so  I  heard,  and  at  last  I  spoke. 

He  answered  my  proposal  in  accents  of  de-  '; 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         191 

spair,  and  I  found  that  he  was  now  expecting 
within  a  few  months  his  first  child's  birth. 
Under  many  conditions  this  might  have  been  a 
joy  to  him,  but  now  it  was  no  joy.  And  yet 
there  was,  he  said,  some  possibility  that  after 
this  event  things  might  improve.  I  recognised 
such  a  possibility  without  much  hope  of  its  ever 
becoming  a  reality.  Indeed  it  was  a  vain  hope. 
It  is  true  enough  that  for  a  time,  the  month  or 
so  while  she  was  still  weak  after  childbirth,  she 
was  unable  to  be  actively  offensive;  but,  hon- 
estly, I  think  the  only  time  he  had  any  peace 
was  before  she  was  able  to  get  up  and  move  about 
the  house.  During  the  last  weeks  of  her  con- 
valescence she  vented  her  temper  and  exercised 
her  uncivil  tongue  upon  the  nurses,  more  than 
one  of  whom  left  the  house,  finding  it  impossi- 
ble to  stay  with  her.  However  he  was  at  any 
rate  more  or  less  at  peace  in  his  own  writing 
room  during  this  period.  When  she  again  be- 
came well  I  gathered  the  real  state  of  the  case 
from  him  both  from  letters  and  conversations, 
and  I  saw  that  eventually  he  would  and  must 
leave  her.  Knowing  him  as  I  did,  I  was  aware 
that  there  would  be  infinite  trouble,  pain,  and 
worry  before  this  was  accomplished,  and  yet  the 
symptoms  of  the  whole  situation  pointed  out  the 
inevitable  end.  I  had  not  the  slightest  remorse 
in  doing  my  best  to  bring  this  about,  but  in  those 


192  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

days  I  had  trouble  enough  of  my  own  upon  my 
shoulders,  and  found  it  impossible  to  see  him 
so  often  as  I  wished;  especially  as  a  visit  from 
me,  or  from  anybody  else,  always  meant  the  loss  i 
of  a  day's  work  to  him.  Yet  I  know  that  he  |  i 
bore  ten  thousand  times  more  than  I  myself  |  ; 
would  have  borne  in  similar  circumstances,  and ,  i 
I  shall  give  a  wrong  impression  of  him  if  any :  i 
one  thinks  that  most  of  his  complaints  and  con- '  i 
fessions  were  not  dragged  out  of  him  by  me.  He  !  i 
did  not  always  complain  readily,  but  one  saw;-; 
the  trouble  in  his  eyes.  Yet  now  it  became  evi-  \  \ 
dent  that  he  would  and  must  revolt  at  last.  It '  i 
grew  so  clear  at  last,  that  I  wanted  him  to  doli 
it  at  once  and  save  himself  years  of  misery,  butu 
to  act  like  that,  not  wholly  out  of  pressing  and !  i 
urgent  necessity  but  out  of  wisdom  and  fore-') 
sight,  was  wholly  beyond  Henry  Maitland.  ■ 

It  was  in  such  conditions  that  the  child  was 
born  and  spent  the  first  months  of  its  life.     Those 
who  have  read  his  books,  and  have  seen  the  pain- 
ful paternal  interest  he  has  more  than  once  de- 
picted, will  understand  how  bitterly  he  felt  that 
his  child,  the  human  being  for  whose  existence  |. 
he  was  responsible,  should  be  brought  up  in  such  ■ : 
conditions  by  a  mother  w^hose  temper  and  con-  !1 
duct    suggested    almost    actual    madness.     He  I 
wrote  to  me:     "My  dire  need  at  present  is  fori', 
a  holiday.     It  is  five  years  since  I  had  a  real  k 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         193 

rest  from  writing,  and  I  begin  to  feel  worn  out. 
It  is  not  only  the  fatigue  of  inventing  and  writ- 
ing; at  the  same  time  I  keep  house  and  bring 
up  the  boy,  and  the  strain,  I  can  assure  you,  is 
rather  severe.  What  I  am  now  trying  to  do 
is  to  accumulate  money  enough  to  allow  of  my 
resting,  at  all  events  from  this  ceaseless  produc- 
tion, for  half  a  year  or  so.  It  profits  me  noth- 
ing to  feel  that  there  is  a  market  for  my  work, 
if  the  work  itself  tells  so  severely  upon  me.  Be- 
fore long  I  shall  really  be  unable  to  write  at  all. 
I  am  trying  to  get  a  few  short  stories  done,  but 
the  effort  is  fearful.  The  worst  of  it  is,  I  can- 
not get  away  by  myself.  It  makes  me  very  un- 
comfortable to  leave  the  house,  even  for  a  day. 
I  foresee  that  until  the  boy  is  several  years  older 
there  will  be  no  possibility  of  freedom  for  me. 
Of  one  thing  I  have  very  seriously  thought,  and 
that  is  whether  it  would  be  possible  to  give  up 
housekeeping  altogether,  and  settle  as  boarders 
in  some  family  on  the  Continent.  The  servant 
question  is  awful,  and  this  might  be  an  escape 
from  it,  but  of  course  there  are  objections.  I 
might  find  all  my  difficulties  doubled." 

I  do  not  think  that  this  letter  requires  much 
comment  or  illustration.  Although  it  is  written 
soberly  enough,  and  without  actual  accusation, 
its  meaning  is  as  plain  as  daylight.  His  wife 
was  alternately  too  familiar,  or  at  open  hostility 


194  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

with  the  servant;  none  could  endure  her  tem- 
per.    She  complained  to  him,  or  the  servant  | 
complained  to    him,  and  he  had  to  make  peace,  | 
or  to  try  to  make  it — mostly  in  vain.     And  then  I 
the  quarrel  broke  out  anew,  and  the  servant  left,  [i 
The  result  was  that  Maitland  himself  often  did  j 
the  household  work  when  he  should  have  been  i 
writing.     He  was  dragged  away  from  his  or-  ji 
dinary  tasks  by  an  uproar  in  the  kitchen;  or  | 
perhaps  one  or  both  of  the  angry  women  came  i 
to  him  for  arbitration  about  some  point  of  com-  * 
mon  decency.     There  is  a  phrase  of  his  in  "The 
Meditations"   which   speaks   of   poor   Hooker, 
whose  prose  he  so  much  admired,  being  "vixen- 
haunted."     This  epithet  of  his  is  a  reasonable 
and  admirable  one,  but  how  bitter  it  was  few 
know  so  well  as  myself. 

In  this  place  it  does  not  seem  to  me  unnatural 
or  out  of  place  to  comment  a  little  on  Raymond, 
the  chief  character  in  "The  Vortex."     He  was 
undoubtedly  in  a  measure  the  later  Maitland. 
His  idea  was  to  present  a  man  whose  character 
developed  with  somewhat  undue  slowness.     He  | 
said  that  Raymond  would  probably  never  have  j 
developed  at  all  after  a  certain  stage  but  for  the  i 
curious  changes  wrought  in  his  views  and  senti-  I 
ments  by  the  fact  of  his  becoming  a  father.     Of  | 
course  it  must  be  obvious  to  any  one,  from  what 
I  have  said,  that  Maitland  himself  would  never 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  195 

have  remained  so  long  with  his  second  wife  after 
the  first  few  months  if  it  had  not  been  that  she 
was  about  to  become  a  mother.  The  earlier  pas- 
sages in  "The  Vortex"  where  he  speaks  about 
children,  or  where  Raymond  himself  speaks 
about  them,  are  meant  to  contrast  strongly  with 
his  way  of  thinking  in  the  later  part  of  the  book 
when  this  particular  character  had  children  of 
his  own.  The  author  declared  that  Raymond, 
as  a  bachelor,  was  largely  an  egoist.  Of  course 
the  truth  of  the  matter  is  that  Maitland  himself 
was  essentially  an  egoist.  I  once  suggested  to 
him  that  he  came  near  being  a  solipsist,  a  word 
he  probably  had  never  heard  of  till  then,  as  he 
never  studied  psychology,  modern  or  other- 
wise. However,  when  Raymond  grew  riper  in 
the  experience  which  killed  his  crude  egoism, 
he  became  another  man.  Maitland,  in  writing 
about  this  particular  book,  said:  "That  Ray- 
mond does  nothing  is  natural  to  the  man.  The 
influences  of  the  whirlpool — that  is  London — 
and  its  draught  on  the  man's  vitality  embarrass 
any  efficiency  there  might  have  been  in  him." 
Through  the  whole  story  of  Maitland  one  feels 
that  everything  that  was  in  any  way  hostile  to 
his  own  views  of  life  did  essentially  embarrass, 
and  almost  make  impossible,  anything  that  w^as 
in  him.  He  had  no  strength  to  draw  nutriment 
by  main  force  from  everything  around  him,  as 


196  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

a  strong  man  does.     He  was  not  so  fierce  a  fire 
as  to  burn  every  kind  of  fuel. 

I  remember  in  this  connection  a  very  inter- 
esting   passage    in    Hamley's    ^'Operations    of 
War" :     ^'When  a  general  surveying  the  map  of 
the  theatre  finds  direct  obstacles  in  the  path  he 
must  advance  by,  he  sees  in  them,  if  he  be  con- 
fident of  his  skill  in  manoeuvring,  increased  op- 
portunities   for   obtaining   strategical    successes 
.  .  .  in  fact,  like  any  other  complications  in  a 
game,  they  offer  on  both  sides  additional  oppor- 
tunities to  skill  and  talent,  and  additional  em- 
barrassments to  incapacity."    But  then  Maitland 
loathed  and  hated  and  feared  obstacles  of  every 
kind.     He  was   apt  to  sit  down  before  them  j 
wringing  his  hands,  and  only  desperation  moved  1 
him,  not  to   attack,  but  to  elude  them.     It  is  i 
an   odd   thing  in   this   respect  to  note  that  he  : 
played  no  games,  and  despised  them  with  pecu-  j 
liar  vigour.     There  is  a  passage  in  one  of  his  j 
letters  to  Rivers  about  a  certain  Evans,  men-  - 
tioned  with    a   note   of   exclamation,    and   thus  1 
kindly     embalmed:     ''Evans, ^^-Strange     being!   ■. 
Yet,  if  his  soul  is  satisfied  with  golf  and  bridge,   I 
why  should  he  not  go  on  golfing  and  bridging?  i 
At  all  events  he  is  working  his  way  to  sincer-  1 
ity."  ! 

The  long  letter  I  quoted  from  above  was  writ-  I 
ten,  I  believe,  in  1895,  when  the  boy  was  nearly  j 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         197 

three  years  old.  I  have  not  attempted,  and  shall 
not  attempt,  to  give  any  detailed  account  month 
by  month,  or  even  year  by  year,  of  his  domestic 
surroundings.  It  was  a  wonder  to  me  that  the 
marriage  lasted,  but  still  it  did  last,  and  all  one 
knew  w^as  that  some  day  it  must  come  to  an  end. 
The  record  of  his  life  in  these  days  would  be 
appalling  if  I  remembered  it  sufficiently,  or  had 
kept  a  diary — as  no  doubt  I  ought  to  have  done 
— or  had  all  the  documents  which  may  be  in 
existence  dealing  with  that  time.  That  he  en- 
dured so  many  years  was  incredible,  and  still 
he  did  endure,  and  the  time  went  on,  and  he 
worked;  mostly,  as  he  said  to  me,  against  time, 
and  a  good  deal  on  commission.  He  wrote: 
*The  old  fervours  do  not  return  to  me,  and  I 
have  got  into  the  very  foolish  habit  of  perpetu- 
ally writing  against  time  and  to  order.  The 
end  of  this  is  destruction."  But  still  I  think  he 
knew  within  him  that  it  could  not  last.  Had  it 
not  been  for  the  boy,  and,  alas,  for  the  birth  of 
yet  another  son,  he  would  now  have  left  her. 
He  acknowledged  it  to  me — if  he  could  not  fight 
he  would  have  to  fly. 

This  extraordinary  lack  of  powxr  to  deal  with 
any  obstacle  must  seem  strange  to  most  men, 
though  no  doubt  many  are  weak.  Yet  few  are 
so  weak  as  Maitland.  Oddly  enough  I  have 
heard  the  idea  expressed  that  there  was  more 


198  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

power  of  fight  in  Maitland  than  he  ever  pos- 
sessed, and  on  inquiry  I  have  learned  that  this 
notion  was  founded  on  a  partial,  or  perhaps  com- 
plete misunderstanding  of  certain  things  he  ex- 
pressed in  the  latter  part  of  "The  Vortex."    To-  1 
wards  the  end  of  the  book  it  seems  to  be  sug-   r 
gested    that    Maitland,    or    Raymond,    tended   j 
really  towards  what  he  calls  in  one  of  his  letters   | 
a  "barrack-room"  view  of  life.     Some  people   j 
seem  to  think  that  the  man  who  was  capable   ! 
of  writing  what  he  did  in  that  book  really  meant  ,| 
it,  and  must  have  had  a  little  touch  of  that  na- 
tive and  natural  brutality  which  makes  English- 
men what  they  are.     But  Maitland  himself,  in 
commenting  on  this  particular  attitude  of  Ray- 
mond,  declared  that  this  quasi  or  semi-ironic  i 
imperialism   of   the  man  was  nothing  but  his   | 
hopeless  recognition  of  facts  which  filled  him  i 
with  disgust.     The  world  was  going  in  a  cer-  j 
tain  way.     There  was  no  refusing  to  see  it.     It  ,1 
stared  every  one  in  the  eyes.     Then  he  adds:  j; 
"But  what  a  course  for  things  to  take!"  i| 

Raymond  in  fact  talks  with  a  little  throwing  ii 
up  of  the  arm,  and  in  a  voice  of  quiet  sarcasm,  || 
"Go  ahead — I  sit  by  and  watch,  and  wonder  i| 
what  will  be  the  end  of  it  all."  This  was  his  ) 
own  habit  of  mind  in  later  years.  He  had  come  | 
at  last  and  at  long  last,  to  recognise  a  course  \ 
of  things  which  formerly  he  could  not,  or  would  | 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         199 

not,  perceive;  and  he  recognised  it  with  just  that 
tossing  of  arm  or  head,  involuntary  of  course. 
I  do  not  think  that  at  this  time  he  w^ould  have 
seen  a  battalion  of  Guards  go  by  and  have 
turned  to  me  saying:  ^^And  this,  this  is  the 
nineteenth  century!"  He  once  wrote  to  Rivers, 
what  he  had  said  a  hundred  times  to  me: 
'^I  have  a  conviction  that  all  I  love  and  believe 
in  is  going  to  the  devil.  At  the  same  time  I 
try  to  watch  with  interest  this  process  of  destruc- 
tion, admiring  any  bit  of  sapper  work  that  is 
well  done."  It  is  rather  amusing  to  note  that 
in  the  letter,  written  in  the  country,  which  puts 
these  things  most  dolefully,  he  adds :  ^The  life 
here  shows  little  trace  of  vortical  influence." 
Of  course  this  is  a  reference  to  the  whirlpool  of 
London. 

In  1896  I  was  myself  married,  and  went  to 
live  in  a  little  house  in  Fulham.  I  understood 
what  peace  was,  and  he  had  none.  As  Mait- 
land  had  not  met  my  wife  for  some  years  I  asked 
him  to  come  and  dine  with  us.  It  was  not  the 
least  heavy  portion  of  his  burden  that  he  always 
left  his  own  house  with  anxiety  and  returned  to 
it  with  fear  and  trembling.  This  woman  of  his 
home  was  given  to  violence,  even  with  her  own 
young  children.  It  was  possible,  as  he  knew, 
for  he  often  said  so  to  me,  that  he  might  re- 
turn and  find  even  the  baby  badly  injured.     And 


200  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

yet  at  last  he  made  up  his  mind  to  accept  my  in- 
vitation.    Whether  it  was  the  fact  that  he  had 
accepted  one  from  me — and  I  often  fancy  that 
his  wife  had  a  grudge  against  me  because  I' 
would  not  go  to  her  house  any  more — I  do  notj 
know,  but  when  I  met  him  in  the  hall  of  my  j 
own  house  I  found  him  in  the  most  extraordi-  * 
nary  state  of  nervous   and  physical   agitation,  i 
Though  usually  of  a  remarkable,  if  healthy,  pal-;| 
lor,  he  was  now  almost  crimson,  and  his  eyes  i 
sparkled  with  furious  indignation.     He  was  hot,  i 
just  as  if  he  had  come  out  of  an  actual  physical 
struggle.     What  he  must  have  looked  like  when 
he  left  Ewell  I  do  not  know,  for  he  had  had 
all  the  time  necessary  to  travel  from  there  to 
Fulham  to  cool  down  in.     After  we  shook  hands  i 
he  asked  me,  almost  breathlessly,  to  allow  him  to;] 
wash  his  face,  so  I  took  him  into  the  bathroom,  j 
He  removed  his  coat,  and  producing  his  elastic] 
band  from  his  waistcoat  pocket,  put  it  about  his  i 
hair  like  a  fillet,  and  began  to  wash  his  face  in  i 
cold  water.     As  he  was  drying  himself  he  broke 
out  suddenly^:     ''I  can't  stand  it  any  more.     I 
have    left    her    for    ever."     I    said:     "Thank; 
heaven  that  you  have.     I  am  very  glad  of  it  i 
— and  for  every  one's  sake  don't  go  back  on  it."  ,| 
Whatever  the  immediate  cause  of  this  out-  i 
burst  was,  it  seems  that  that  afternoon  the  whole  1 
trouble  came  to  a  culmination.     The  wife  be-  i 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         201 

haved  like  a  maniac;  she  shrieked,  and  struck 
him.  She  abused  him  in  the  vilest  terms,  such 
as  he  could  not  or  would  not  repeat  to  me.  It 
was  with  the  greatest  difficulty  that  I  at  last 
got  him  calm  enough  to  meet  any  one  else. 
When  he  did  calm  down  after  he  had  had  some- 
thing to  eat  and  a  little  to  drink,  the  prospect 
of  his  freedom,  which  he  believed  had  come  to 
him  once  more,  inspired  him  with  pathetic  and 
peculiar  exhilaration.  In  one  sense  I  think  he 
was  happy  that  night.     He  slept  in  London. 

I  should  have  given  a  wholly  false  impres- 
sion of  Maitland  if  any  one  now  imagined  that 
I  believed  that  the  actual  end  had  come  to  his 
marriage.  No  man  knew  his  weakness  better 
than  I  did,  and  I  moved  heaven  and  earth  in 
my  endeavours  to  keep  him  to  his  resolution,  to 
prevent  him  going  back  to  Epsom  on  any  pre- 
text, and  all  my  efforts  were  vain.  In  three 
days  I  learned  that  his  resolution  had  broken 
down.  By  the  help  of  some  busybody  who  had 
more  kindness  than  intelligence,  they  patched 
up  a  miserable  peace,  and  he  wefit  back  to  Ewell. 
And  yet  that  peace  was  no  peace.  Maitland, 
perhaps  the  most  sensitive  man  alive,  had  to  en- 
dure the  people  in  the  neighbouring  houses  com- 
ing out  upon  the  doorstep,  eager  to  inquire  what 
disaster  was  occurring  in  the  next  house.  There 
were  indeed  legends  in  the  Epsom  Road  that  the 


202  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

mild  looking  writer  beat  and  brutalised  his  wife, 
though  most  knew,  by  means  of  servants'  chatter, 
what  the  actual  facts  were. 

It  was  in  this  year  that  he  did  at  last  take  an 
important  step  w^hich  cost  him  much  anxiety  be- 
fore putting  it  through.  His  fears  for  his  eldest 
child  were  so  extreme  that  he  induced  his  peo- 
ple in  the  north  to  give  the  child  a  home — the 
influence  and  example  of  the  mother  he  could 
no  longer  endure  for  the  boy.  His  wife  parted 
with  the  child  without  any  great  difficulty, 
though  of  course  she  made  it  an  occasion  for 
abusing  her  husband  in  every  conceivable  way. 
He  wrote  to  me  in  the  late  summer  of  that  year: 
*^I  much  want  to  see  you,  but  just  now  it  is  im- 
possible for  me  to  get  to  town,  and  the  present 
discomfort  of  everything  here  forbids  me  to  ask 
you  to  come.  I  am  straining  every  nerve  to  get 
some  work  done,  for  really  it  begins  to  be  a  ques- 
tion whether  I  shall  ever  again  finish  a  book. 
Interruptions  are  so  frequent  and  so  serious. 
The  so-called  holiday  has  been  no  use  to  me;  a 
mere  waste  of  time — but  I  was  obliged  to  go, 
for  only  in  that  way  could  I  have  a  few  weeks 
with  the  boy  who,  as  I  have  told  you,  lives  now 
at  Mirefields  and  will  continue  to  live  there.  I 
shall  never  let  him  come  back  to  my  own  dwell- 
ing. Have  patience  with  me,  old  friend,  for  I 
am  hard  beset."     He  ends  this  letter  with :     "If 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         203 

the  boy  grows  up  in  clean  circumstances,  that 
will  be  my  one  satisfaction." 

Whether  he  had  peace  or  not  he  still  worked 
prodigiously,  though  not  perhaps  for  so  many 
hours  as  was  his  earlier  custom.  But  his  health 
about  this  time  began  to  fail.  Much  of  this 
came  from  his  habits  of  work,  which  were  en- 
tirely incompatible  with  continued  health  of 
brain  and  body.  He  once  said  to  Rivers: 
'^Visitors — I  fall  sick  with  terror  in  thinking  of 
them.  If  by  rare  chance  any  one  comes  here  it 
means  to  me  the  loss  of  a  whole  day,  a  most 
serious  matter."  And  his  whole  day  was,  of 
course,  a  long  day.  No  man  of  letters  can  pos- 
sibly sit  for  ever  at  the  desk  during  eight  hours, 
as  was  frequently  ^'his  brave  custom"  as  he 
phrased  it  somewhere.  If  he  had  worked  in  a 
more  reasonable  manner,  and  had  been  satisfied 
with  doing  perhaps  a  thousand  words  a  day, 
which  is  not  at  all  an  unreasonably  small  amount 
for  a  man  who  works  steadily  through  most  of 
the  year,  his  health  might  never  have  broken 
down  in  the  way  it  did.  He  had  been  moved 
in  a  way  towards  these  hours,  partly  by  actual 
desperation;  partly  by  the  great  loneliness 
which  had  been  thrust  upon  him;  very  largely 
by  the  want  of  money  which  prevented  him 
from  amusing  himself  in  the  manner  of  the  aver- 
age man,  but  chiefly  by  his  sense  of  devotion  to 


204  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE  i. 

what  he  was  doing.  One  of  his  favourite  stories  i 
was  that  of  Heyne,  the  great  classical  scholar,  i 
who  was  reported  to  work  sixteen  hours  a  day.  j 
This  he  did,  according  to  the  literary  tradition,;! 
for  the  whole  of  his  working  life,  except  upon  : 
the  day  when  he  was  married.  He  made,  foru 
that  occasion  only,  a  compact  with  the  bride  that  . 
he  was  to  be  allowed  to  work  half  his  usual  : 
stint.  And  half  Heyne's  usual  amount  was: 
Maitland's  whole  day,  which  I  maintain  was  at  I; 
least  five  hours  too  much.  This  manner  ofi 
working,  combined  with  his  quintessential  and  i 
habitual  loneliness  made  it  very  hard,  not  only  ! 
upon  him,  but  also  on  his  friends.  It  was  quite  f 
impossible  to  see  him,  even  about  matters  of ,; 
comparative  urgency,  unless  a  meeting  had  been  \\ 
arranged  beforehand.  For  even  after  his  work ,( 
was  done,  it  was  never  done.  He  started  pre-  ji 
paring  for  the  next  day,  turning  over  phrases  1 
in  his  mind,  and  considering  the  next  chapter. 
I  believe  that  in  one  point  I  was  very  useful  to  |l 
him  in  this  matter,  for  I  suggested  to  him,  as  |i 
I  have  done  to  others,  that  my  own  practice  of ,; 
finishing  a  chapter  and  then  writing  some  two  ,\ 
or  three  lines  of  the  next  one  while  my  mind  was  |i 
warm  upon  the  subject,  was  a  vast  help  for  the  |i 
next  day's  labour.  ij 

Now   the  way   he  worked  was   this.     After  i 
breakfast,    at   nine   o'clock,    he   sat   down   and  i 

ii 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         205 

worked  till  one.  Then  he  had  his  midday  meal, 
and  took  a  little  walk.  In  the  afternoon,  about 
half-past  three,  he  sat  down  again  and  wrote 
till  six  o'clock  or  a  little  after.  Then  he  worked 
again  from  half-past  seven  to  ten.  I  very  much 
doubt  whether  there  is  any  modern  writer  who 
has  ever  tried  to  keep  up  work  at  this  rate  who 
did  not  end  in  a  hospital  or  a  lunatic  asylum, 
or  die  young.  To  my  mind  it  shows,  in  a  way 
that  nothing  else  can,  that  he  had  no  earthly 
business  to  be  writing  novels  and  spinning  things 
largely  out  of  his  subjective  mind,  when  he 
ought  to  have  been  dealing  with  the  objective 
world,  or  with  books.  I  myself  write  with  a 
certain  amount  of  ease.  It  may,  indeed,  be  dif- 
ficult to  start,  but  when  a  thing  is  begun  I  go 
straight  ahead,  writing  steadily  for  an  hour,  or 
perhaps  an  hour  and  a  half — rarely  any  more. 
I  have  then  done  my  day's  work,  which  is  now 
very  seldom  more  than  two  thousand  words,  al- 
though on  one  memorable  occasion  I  actually^ 
wrote  thirteen  thousand  words  with  the  pen  in 
ten  hours.  Maitland  used  to  write  three  or  four 
of  his  slips,  as  he  called  them,  which  were 
small  quarto  pages  of  very  fine  paper,  and  on 
each  slip  there  were  twelve  hundred  words. 
Whether  he  wrote  one,  or  two,  or  three  slips  in 
the  day  he  took  an  equal  length  of  time. 

Among  my  notes  I  find  one  about  a  letter  of 


206  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

his  written  in  June  1895  to  Mrs.  Lake,  declin- 
ing an  invitation  to  visit  Dr.  Lake's  house  which, 
no  doubt,  would  have  done  him  a  great  deal 
of  good.  He  says:  "Let  me  put  before  you 
an  appalling  list  of  things  that  have  to  be  done, 
(i)  Serial  story  (only  begun)  of  about  eighty 
thousand  words.  (2)  Short  novel  for  CasselPs 
to  be  sent  in  by  end  of  October.  Neither  be- 
gun nor  thought  of.  (3)  Six  short  stories  for 
the  English  Illustrated — neither  begun  nor 
thought  of.  (4)  Twenty  papers  for  The 
Sketch  of  a  thousand  words  each.  Dimly  fore- 
seen." Now  to  a  man  who  had  the  natural  gift 
of  writing  fiction  and  some  reasonable  time  to 
do  it  in,  this  would  seem  no  such  enormous 
amount  of  work.  For  Maitland  it  was  appall- 
ing, not  so  much,  perhaps,  on  account  of  the  ac- 
tual amount  of  labour — if  it  had  been  one  book 
— but  for  its  variousness.  He  moved  from  one 
thing  to  another  in  fiction  with  great  slowness. 

As  I  have  said,  his  health  was  not  satisfactory. 
I  shall  have  something  to  say  about  this  in  de- 
tail a  little  later.     It  was  his  own  opinion,  and  1 
that  of  certain  doctors,  that  his  lung  was  really 
affected  by  tuberculosis.     Of  this  I  had  then  \ 
very  serious  doubts.     But  he  wrote  in  January  j 
1897:     "The  weather  and  my  lung  are  keeping  ! 
me  indoors  at  present,  but  I  should  much  like  ' 
to  come  to  you.     Waterpipes  freezing — a  five-  ; 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         207 

pound  note  every  winter  to  the  plumber.  Of 
course  this  is  distinctly  contrived  by  the  building 
fraternity." 

But  things  were  not  always  as  bad  as  may  be 
gathered  from  a  casual  consideration  of  what  I 
have  said.  In  writing  a  life  events  come  too 
thickly.  For  instance  in  1897  he  wrote  to  me: 
"Happily  things  are  far  from  being  as  bad  as 
last  year."  It  appears  that  a  certain  lady,  a 
Miss  Greathead,  about  whom  I  really  know 
nothing  but  what  he  told  me,  interested  herself 
with  the  utmost  kindness  in  his  domestic  affairs. 
He  wrote  to  me:  '^Miss  Greathead  has  been 
of  very  great  use,  and  will  continue  to  be  so,  I 
think.  This  house  is  to  be  given  up  in  any  case 
at  Michaelmas,  and  another  will  not  be  taken 
till  I  see  my  way  more  clearly.  Where  I  my- 
self shall  live  during  the  autumn  is  uncertain. 
We  must  meet  in  the  autumn.  Work  on — I 
have  plans  for  seven  books." 


CHAPTER  IX  I 

j 

WHAT  dismal  catastrophe  or  prolonged  j 

domestic  uproar  led  to  the  final  end  of  I 

his  married  life  in  1897  I  do  not  know,  j 

Nor  have   I   cared  to   inquire  very  curiously,  i 

The  fact  remains,  and  it  was  inevitable.     To-  ! 

wards  the  end  of  the  summer  he  made  up  his  \ 

mind  to  go  to  Italy  in  September.     He  wrote  \ 

to  me:     ^'All  work  in  England  is  at  an  end  for  1 

me  just  now.     I  shall  be  away  till  next  spring  j 

— looking  forward  with  immense  delight  to  soli-  i 

tude.     Of  course  I  have  a  great  deal  to  do  as  \ 

soon  as  I  can  settle,  which  I  think  will  be  at  1 

Siena  first."     As  a  matter  of  fact  the  very  next  1 

letter  of  his  which  I  possess  came  to  me  from  \ 

Siena.     He  said:     "I  am  so  confoundedly  hard  ! 

at  work  upon  the  Novelists  book  that  I  find  it  1 

very    difficult    to    write    my    letters.     Thank  i 

heaven,   more  than  half   is   done.     I  shall   go  i 

south  about  the  tenth  of  November.     It  is  dull  ) 

here,  and  I  should  not  stay  for  the  pleasure  of  it.  \ 

You  know  that  I  do  not  care  much  for  Tuscany.  \ 

The  landscape  is  never  striking  about  here,  and  | 
one   does   not  get  the   glorious   colour  of   the 


HENRY  MAITLAND  209 

south."  So  one  sees  how  Italy  had  awakened 
his  colour  sense.  As  I  have  said,  it  was  after 
his  first  visit  to  Italy  that  I  noted,  both  in  his 
1  books  and  his  conversation,  an  acute  awakening 
passion  for  colour.  I  think  it  grew  in  him  to 
the  end  of  his  life.  He  ended  this  last  letter 
to  me  with:  "Well,  well,  let  us  get  as  soon  as 
possible  into  Magna  Graecia  and  the  old  dead 
world." 

I  said  some  time  ago  that  I  had  finished  all  I 
had  to  write  about  the  Victorian  novelists,  and 
yet  I  find  there  is  something  still  to  say  of  Dick- 
1  ens,  and  it  is  not  against  the  plan  of  such  a  ram- 
bling book  as  this  to  put  it  down  here  and  now. 
When  he  went  to  Siena  to  write  his  book  of 
criticism  it  seemed  to  me  a  very  odd  choice  of  a 
place  for  such  a  piece  of  work,  and  indeed  I 
wondered  at  his  undertaking  it  at  any  price.  It 
is  quite  obvious  to  all  those  who  really  under- 
stand his  attitude  towards  criticism  of  modern 
things  that  great  as  his  interest  was  in  Dickens 
it  would  never  have  impelled  him  to  write  a 
strong,  rough,  critical  book  mostly  about  him 
had  it  not  been  for  the  necessity  of  making 
money.  Indeed  he  expressed  so  much  to  me, 
and  I  find  again  in  a  letter  that  he  wrote  to  Mrs. 
Rivers,  with  whom  he  was  now  on  very  friendly 
terms,  ''I  have  made  a  good  beginning  w^ith  my 
critical  book,  and  long  to  have  done  with  it,  for 


210  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

of  course  it  is  an  alien  subject."  No  doubt  there 
are  at  least  two  classes  of  Maitland's  readers, 
those  who   understand   the  man   and  love   his 
really  characteristic  work,  and  those  who  have 
no  understanding  of  him  at  all,  or  any  deep 
appreciation,  but  probably  profess  a  great  ad- 
miration for  this  book  which  they  judge  by  the 
part  on  Dickens.     I  think  that  Andrew  Lang 
was  one  of  these,  judging  from  a  criticism  that 
he  once  wrote  on  Maitland.     I  know  that  I 
have  often  heard  people  of  intelligence  express 
so  high  an  opinion  of  the  "Victorian  Novelists"  i| 
as  to  imply  a  lack  of  appreciation  of  his  others 
work.     The  study  is  no  doubt  written  with  much  I 
skill,  and  with  a  good  writer's  command  of  his  i 
subject,  and  command  of  himself.     That  is  to  ; 
say,  he  manages  by  skill  to  make  people  believe  j 
he  was  sufficiently  interested  in  his  subject  to  i: 
write  about  it.     To  speak  plainly  he  thought  it  i 
a  pure  waste  of  time,  except  from  the  mere  finan-  i 
cial  point  of  view,  just  as  he  did  his  cutting  down  £ 
of  Mayhew's  "Life  of  Dickens" — which,  indeed,  I 
he  considered  a  gross  outrage,  but  professed  his  i 
inability  to  refuse  the  "debauched  temptation"  of  ii 
the  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  offered  him  for  the  : 
work.  I 

It  would  be  untrue  if  I  seemed  to  suggest  that  i 
he  was  not  enthusiastic  about  Dickens,  even  more 
so  than  I  am  myself  save  at  certain  times  and  l|i 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         211 

seasons.  For  me  Dickens  Is  a  man  for  times  and 
periods.  I  cannot  read  him  for  years,  and  then 
I  read  him  all.  What  I  do  mean  is  that  Mait- 
land's  love  of  this  author,  or  of  Thackeray  say, 
would  never  have  impelled  him  to  write.  Yet 
there  is  much  in  the  book  which  is  of  great  inter- 
;  est,  if  it  were  only  as  matter  of  comment  on  Mait- 
land's  own  self.  The  other  day  I  came  across 
one  sentence  which  struck  me  curiously.  It  was 
where  Maitland  asked  the  reader  to  imagine 
Charles  Dickens  occupied  in  the  blacking  ware- 
house for  ten  years.  He  said:  ^Ticture  him 
striving  vainly  to  find  utterance  for  the  thoughts 
that  were  in  him,  refused  the  society  of  any  but 
boors  and  rascals,  making  perhaps  futile  attempts 
to  succeed  as  an  actor,  and  in  full  manhood  meas- 
uring the  abyss  which  sundered  him  from  all  he 
had  hoped."  When  I  came  to  the  passage  I  put 
the  book  down  and  pondered  for  a  while,  know- 
ing well  that  as  Maitland  wrote  these  words  he 
was  thinking  even  more  of  himself  than  of  Dick- 
ens, and  knowing  that  what  was  not  true  of  his 
subject  was  most  bitterly  true  of  the  writer. 
There  is  another  passage  somewhere  in  the  book 
in  which  he  says  that  Dickens  could  not  have 
struggled  for  long  years  against  lack  of  appre- 
ciation. This  he  rightly  puts  down  to  Dickens' 
essentially  dramatic  leanings.  The  man  needed 
immediate  applause.     But  again  Maitland  was 


i 


212  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

thinking  of  himself,  for  he  had  indeed  struggled 
many  years  without  any  appreciation  save  that  { 
of  one  or  two  friends  and  some  rare  birds  among  j 
the  public.  I  sometimes  think  that  one  of  Mait-  , 
land's  great  attractions  to  Dickens  lay  in  the  fact,  j 
which  he  himself  mentions  and  enlarges  on,  that  i 
Dickens  treated  of  the  lower  middle  class  and  the 
class  immediately  beneath  it.  This  is  where  the  . 
great  novelist  was  at  his  best,  and  in  the  same  ; 
way  these  were  the  only  classes  that  Maitland  . 
really  knew  well.  There  is  in  several  things  a  j 
curious  likeness  betwxen  Dickens  and  Maitland,  ! 
though  it  lies  not  on  the  surface.  He  says  that  j 
Dickens  never  had  any  command  of  a  situation 
although  he  was  so  very  strong  in  incident.  This 
was  also  a  great  weakness  of  Henry  Maitland.  j 
It  rarely  happens  that  he  works  out  a  powerful  ; 
and  dramatic  situation  to  its  final  limits,  though  | 
sometimes  he  does  succeed  in  doing  so.  This  ; 
failure  in  dealing  with  great  situations  is  pecul-  ; 
iarly  characteristic  of  most  English  novelists.  I  ' 
have  frequently  noticed  in  otherwise  admirable  j 
books  by  men  of  very  considerable  abilities  and  | 
attainments,  with  tolerable  command  of  their  j 
own  language,  that  they  have  on  every  occasion  j 
shirked  the  great  dramatic  scene  just  when  it  j 
was  expected  and  needed.  Perhaps  this  is  due  | 
to  the  peculiar  mauvaise  honte  of  the  English  ; 
mind.     To  write,  and  yet  not  to  give  oneself  | 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         213 

away,  seems  to  be  the  aim  of  too  many  writers, 
though  the  great  aim  of  all  great  writing  is  to  do, 
or  to  try  to  do,  what  they  avoid.  The  final 
analysis  of  dreadful  passion  and  pain  comes,  per- 
haps, too  close  to  them.  They  feel  the  glow  but 
also  a  sensation  of  shame  in  the  great  emotions. 
There  are  times  that  Maitland  felt  this,  though 
perhaps  unconsciously.  It  is  at  any  rate  certain 
that,  like  so  many  people,  he  never  actually  de- 
picted with  blood  and  tears  the  frightful  situ- 
ations in  which  his  life  was  so  extraordinarily 
full. 

It  is  an  interesting  passage  in  this  book  in 
which  Maitland  declares  that  great  popularity 
was  never  yet  attained  by  any  one  deliberately 
writing  down  to  a  low  ideal.  Above  all  men  he 
knew  that  the  artist  was  necessarily  sincere,  how- 
ever poor  an  artist  he  might  be.  So  Rousseau  in 
his  "Confessions"  asserts  that  nothing  really  great 
can  come  from  an  entirely  venal  pen.  I  remem- 
ber Maitland  greatly  enjoyed  a  story  I  told  him 
about  myself.  While  I  was  still  a  poverty- 
stricken  and  struggling  writer  my  father,  who 
had  no  knowledge  whatever  of  the  artistic  tem- 
perament, although  he  had  a  very  great  apprecia- 
tion of  the  best  literature  of  the  past,  came  to  me 
and  said  seriously :  "My  boy,  if  you  want  money 
and  I  know  you  do,  why  do  you  not  write  ^Bow 
Bells  Novelettes'?     They  will  give  you  fifteen 


214  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 


I 


pounds  for  each  of  them."  I  replied  to  him,  j 
not  I  think  without  a  tinge  of  bitterness  at  j 
being  so  misunderstood:  ''My  dear  sir,  it  is  j 
as  much  a  matter  of  natural  endowment  to  be  a  j 
damned  fool  as  to  be  a  great  genius,  and  I  am  j 
neither."  « 

I  have  said  that  Maitland  was  most  essentially  | 
a  conservative,  indeed  in  many  ways  a  reaction-  \ 
ary,  if  one  so  passive  can  be  called  that.  I  think  ■ 
the  only  actual  revolutionary  utterance  of  his  • 
mind  which  stands  on  record  is  in  the  "Victorian  \ 
Novelists."  It  is  when  he  is  speaking  of  Mr.  ] 
Casby  of  the  shorn  locks.  He  wrote:  "This  ' 
question  of  landlordism  should  have  been  treated  \ 
by  Dickens  on  a  larger  scale.  It  remains  one  of  I 
the  curses  of  English  life,  and  is  likely  to  do  so  ■ 
till  the  victims  of  house-owners  see  their  way  to  I 
cutting,  not  the  hair,  but  the  throats,  of  a  few  se-;J 
lected  specimens."  'M 

It  may  seem  a  hard  thing  to  say,  but  it  is  a  fact,  ; 
that  any  revolutionary  sentiment  there  was  in  ■ 
Maitland  was  excited,  not  by  any  native  liberal-  ■ 
ism  of  his  mind,  or  even  by  his  sympathy  for  the  i 
suffering  of  others,  but  came  directly  out  of  his  i 
own  personal  miseries  and  trials.  He  had  had  to  i 
do  with  landlords  who  refused  to  repair  their  I 
houses,  and  with  houses  which  he  looked  upon  I 
as  the  result  of  direct  and  wicked  conspiracy  be- 
tween builders  and  plumbers.     But  his  words  I 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         215 

are  capable  of  a  wider  interpretation  than  he 
might  have  given  them. 

If  I  had  indeed  been  satisfied  that  this  de- 
parture of  Maitland's  to  Italy  had  meant  the  end 
of  all  the  personal  troubles  of  his  marriage,  I 
should  have  been  highly  satisfied,  and  not  dis- 
pleased w^ith  any  part  I  might  have  taken  in 
bringing  about  so  desirable  a  result.     But  I  must 

'  say  that,  know^ing  him  as  I  did,  I  had  very  seri- 
ous doubts.  I  w^as  well  aware  of  what  a  little 
pleading  might  do  with  him.  It  was  in  fact 
possible  that  one  plaintive  letter  from  his  wife 
might  have  brought  him  back  again.  Fortu- 
nately it  was  never  written.  The  woman  was 
even  then  practically  mad,  and  though  im- 
mensely difficult  to  manage  by  those  friends, 
such  as  Miss  Greathead  and  Miss  Kingdon,  who 

I  interested  themselves  in  his  affairs  and  did  much 
more  for  him  at  critical  times  than  I  had  been 
able  to  do,  she  never,  I  think,  appealed  to  her 
husband.  But  it  was  extraordinary,  before  he 
went  to  Italy,  to  observe  the  waverings  of  his 
mind.  When  he  was  keeping  his  eldest  boy  at 
Mirefields,  supplying  his  wife  with  money  for 
the  house  and  living  in  lodgings  at  Salcombe,  he 
wrote  giving  a  rough  account  of  what  he  might 
do,  or  might  have  to  do,  and  ended  up  by  saying: 
^'Already,  lodgings  are  telling  on  my  nerves.  I 
almost  think  I  suffer  less  even  from  yells  and 


216  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE  ? 

insults  in  a  house  of  my  own."     He  even  began 
to  forget  '^the  fifth-rate  dabblers  in  the  British 
gravy,"  for  which  fine  phrase  T.  E.  Brown  is 
responsible.     Maitland  ought  to  have  known  it 
and  did  not.     It  was  this  perpetual  wavering: 
and    weakness    in    him    which    perplexed    his 
friends,  and  would  indeed  have  alienated  at  last 
very  many  of  them  had  it  not  been  for  the  endur- 
ing charm  in  all  his  weakness.     Nevertheless  he 
was  now  out  of  England,  and  those  who  knew 
him  were  glad  to  think  it  was  so.     He  was,  per- 
haps, to  have  a  better  time.     Nevertheless,  even 
so,  he  wrote  to  his  friend  Lake:    ^'Yes,  it  is  true 
that  I  am  going  to  glorious  scenes,  but  do  not 
forget  that  I  go  with  much  anxiety  in  my  mind 
— anxiety  about  the  little  children,  the  chances 
of  life  and  death,  &c.,  &c.     It  is  not  like  my  i 
Italian  travel  eight  years  ago,  when — save  for  i 
cash — I  was  independent.     I  have  to  make  a  E 
good  two  hundred  a  year  apart  from  my  own  t 
living  and  casual  expenses.     If  I  live  I  think  I   1 
shall  do  it — but  there's  no  occasion  for  merri-   • 
ment."     Yet  if  it  was  no  occasion  for  mere  mer-   ] 
riment  it  was  an  occasion  for  joy.     He  knew  it   ! 
well,  and  so  did  those  know  who  understand  the   i 
description  that  Maitland  gave  in  ^'Paternoster   i 
Row,"  of  the  sunset  at  Athens.     It  is  very  won-    ; 
derfuUy  painted,  and  as  he  describes  it  he  makes    I 
Giffordsay:     "Stop,  or  I  shall  clutch  you  by  the    i 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         217 

throat.  I  warned  you  before  that  I  cannot 
stand  these  reminiscences."  And  this  reminds 
me  that  when  I  wrote  to  him  once  from  Naples, 
he  replied:  "You  fill  me  with  envious  gloom." 
But  now,  when  he  had  finished  his  pot-boiler  of 
Siena,  he  was  going  south  to  Naples,  his  ''most 
interesting  city  of  the  modern  world,"  and  after- 
wards farther  south  to  the  Calabrian  Hills,  and 
the  old  dead  world  of  Magna  Graecia. 

As  a  result  of  that  journey  he  gave  us  ''Magna 
Graecia."  This  book  of  itself  is  a  sufficient 
proof  that  he  was  by  nature  a  scholar,  an  in- 
habitant of  the  very  old  world,  a  discoverer  of 
the  time  of  the  Renaissance,  a  Humanist,  a  pure 
man  of  letters,  and  not  by  nature  a  writer  of 
novels  or  romances.  Although  Maitland's 
scholarship  was  rather  wide  than  deep  save  in 
one  or  two  lines  of  investigation,  yet  his  feeling 
for  all  those  matters  with  which  a  sympathetic 
scholarship  can  deal  was  amazingly  deep  and 
true.  Once  in  Calabria  and  the  south  he  made 
and  would  make  great  discoveries.  In  spite  of 
his  poverty,  which  comes  out  so  often  in  the  de- 
scription of  his  conditions  upon  this  journey,  he 
loved  everything  he  found  there  with  a  strange 
and  wonderful  and  almost  pathetic  passion.  I 
remember  on  his  return  how  he  talked  to  me  of 
the  far  south,  and  of  his  studies  in  Cassiodorus. 
One  incident  in  "Magna  Graecia,"  which  is  re- 


218  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 


I 


lated  somewhat  differently  from  what  he  him* 
self  told  me  at  the  time,  pleased  him  most  es- 
pecially. It  was  when  he  met  two  men  and 
mentioned  the  name  of  Cassiodorus,  whereupon 
they  burst  out  with  amazement,  ^'Cassiodoria, 
why  we  know  Cassiodoria!''  That  the  name 
should  be  yet  familiar  to  these  live  men  of  the 
south  gratified  his  historic  sense  amazingly,  and 
I  can  well  remember  how  he  threw  his  head  back 
and  shook  his  long  hair  with  joy,  and  burst  into 
one  of  his  most  characteristic  roars  of  laughter.  '] 
It  was  a  simple  incident,  but  it  brought  back  the  i 
past  to  him.  ■ 

Of  all  his  books  I  think  I  love  best  '^Magna  j 
Graecia."  I  always  liked  it  much  better  than  i 
^The  Meditations  of  Mark  Sumner,"  and  for  a  i 
thousand  reasons.  For  one  thing  it  is  a  wholly  'j 
true  book.  In  ^^The  Meditations,"  he  falsified,  . 
in  the  literary  sense,  very  much  that  he  wrote.  \ 
As  I  have  said,  it  needs  to  be  read  with  a  com-  1 
mentary  or  guide.  But  "Magna  Graecia"  is  | 
pure  Maitland;  it  is  absolutely  himself.  It  is,  \ 
indeed,  very  nearly  the  Maitland  who  might  i 
have  been  if  ill  luck  had  not  pursued  him  from  \ 
his  boyhood.  Had  he  been  a  successful  man  on  i 
the  lines  that  fate  pointed  out  to  him ;  had  he  sue-  5 
ceeded  greatly — or  nobly,  as  he  would  have  said  ■ 
— at  the  University;  had  he  become  a  tutor,  a  ,i 
^  don,  a  notable  man  among  men  of  letters,  still   \ 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         219 

would  he  have  travelled  in  southern  Italy,  and 
made  his  great  pilgrimage  to  the  Fonte  di  Cas- 
siodorio.  Till  he  knew  south  Italy  his  greatest 
joy  had  been  in  books.  That  he  loved  books  we 
all  know.  There,  of  a  certainty,  "The  Medi- 
tations" is  a  true  witness.  But  how  much  more 
he  loved  the  past  and  the  remains  of  Greece  and 
old,  old  Italy,  ''Magna  Graecia"  proves  to  us 
almost  with  tears. 

I  have  said  that  Maitland  was  perhaps  not  a 
deep  scholar,  for  scholarship  nowadays  must 
needs  be  specialised  if  it  is  to  be  deep.  He  had 
his  odd  prejudices,  and  hugged  them.  The 
hypothesis  of  Wolf  concerning  Homer  visibly 
annoyed  him.  He  preferred  to  think  of  the 
Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  as  having  been  written  by 
one  man.  This  came  out  of  his  love  of  person- 
ality— the  great  ones  of  the  past  were  as  gods  to 
him.  All  works  of  art,  or  books,  or  great  events 
were  wholly  theirs,  for  they  made  even  the  world, 
and  the  world  made  them  not.  Though  I  know 
that  he  would  have  loved,  in  many  ways,  a  book 
such  as  Gilbert  Murray's  ''Rise  of  the  Greek 
Epic,"  yet  Murray's  fatally  decisive  analysis  of 
the  Homeric  legend  would  have  pained  him 
deeply.  On  one  occasion  I  remember  sending 
to  him,  partly  as  some  reasonable  ground  for  my 
Own  scepticism,  but  more,  I  think,  out  of  some 
mischievous  desire  to  plague  him,  a  cleverly 


220  HENRY  MAITLAND  | 

written  pamphlet  by  a  barrister  which  threw 
doubts  upon  the  Shakespearean  legend.  He 
wrote  to  me:  ''I  have  read  it  with  great  indig- 
nation. Confound  the  fellow! — he  disturbs 
me."  But  then  he  was  essentially  a  conservative, 
and  he  lived  in  an  alien  time. 


CHAPTER  X 

WHAT   he   suffered,   endured,   and   en- 
joyed in  Magna  Graecia  and  his  old 
I  dead  world,  those  know  who  have  read 

with  sympathy  and  understanding.  It  was  truly 
as  if  the  man,  born  in  exile,  had  gone  home  at 
last — so  much  he  loved  it,  so  well  he  understood 
the  old  days.  And  now  once  more  he  came  back 
to  England  to  a  happier  life,  even  though  great 
anxieties  still  weighed  him  down.  Yet  with 
some  of  these  anxieties  there  was  joy,  for  he  loved 
his  children  and  thought  very  much  of  them, 
hoping  and  fearing.  One  of  the  very  first  let- 
ters I  received  from  him  on  his  return  from  Italy 
is  dated  May  7,  1898,  and  was  written  from  Hen- 
ley in  Arden:  ^'You  have  it  in  your  power  to 
do  me  a  most  important  service.  Will  you  on 
every  opportunity  industriously  circulate  the 
news  that  I  am  going  to  live  henceforth  in  War- 
wickshire? It  is  not  strictly  true,  but  a  very 
great  deal  depends  on  my  real  abode  being  pro- 
tected from  invasion.  If  you  could  inspire  a 
newspaper   paragraph.  ...  I    should   think  it 

impudent   to    suppose    that   newspapers    cared 

221 


222  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

about  the  matter  but  that  they  have  so  often 
chronicled  my  movements,  and  if  by  any  chance 
the  truth  got  abroad  it  w^ould  mean  endless  in- 
convenience and  misery  to  me.  You  shall  hear 
more  in  detail  when  I  am  less  be-devilled."  All 
this  requires  little  comment.  Every  one  can  un- 
derstand how  it  was  with  him. 

Later  in  the  year  he  wrote  to  me:     *^My  be- 
haviour is  bestial,  but  I  am  so  hard  driven  that 
it  is  perhaps  excusable.     All  work  impossible 
owing  to  ceaseless  reports  of  mad  behaviour  in 
London.     That  woman  was   all  but  given  in 
charge  the  other  day  for  assaulting  her  landlady  | 
with  a  stick.     My  solicitor  is  endeavouring  to  f. 
get  the  child  out  of  her  hands.     I  fear  its  life  is  3 
endangered,    but    of    course    the    difficulty    of  \ 
coming  to  any  sort  of  arrangement  with  such  a  d 
person  is  very  great.  .  .  .  Indeed  I  wish  we  f 
could  have  met  before  your  departure  for  South   t 
Africa.     My  only  consolation  is  the  thought  that   f 
something  or  other  decisive  is  bound  to  have   i 
happened  before  you  come  back,  and  then  we   ! 
will  meet  as   in  the  old  days,  please  heaven.   , 
As  for  me,  my  literary  career  is  at  an  end,  and  1 
the  workhouse   looms   larger   day  by   day.     I    •, 
should  not  care,  of  course,  but  for  the  boys.     A    - 
bad  job,  a  bad  job."     But  better  times  were  per-   \ 
haps  coming  for  him.     The  child  that  he  refers    i 
to  as  still  in  the  hands  of  his  mother  was  his 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         223 

youngest  boy.  Much  of  his  life  at  this  time  is 
lost  to  me  because  much  happened  while  I  was 
absent  in  South  Africa,  where  I  spent  some 
months  in  travel.  I  remember  it  pleased  him 
to  get  letters  from  me  from  far-off  places  such  as 
Buluwayo.  He  always  had  the  notion  that  I 
was  an  extraordinarily  capable  person,  an  idea 
which  only  had  some  real  truth  if  my  practical 
capacities  were  compared  with  his  strange  want 
of  them.  By  now  he  was  not  living  in  War- 
wickshire; indeed,  if  I  remember  rightly,  on  my 
return  from  Africa  I  found  him  at  Godalming. 
When  I  left  Cape  Town  I  was  very  seriously 
ill,  and  I  remained  ill  for  some  months  after  my 
return  home.  Therefore  it  was  some  time  till 
we  met  again.  But  when  we  did  meet  it  was  at 
Leatherhead,  where  he  was  in  lodgings,  pleased 
to  be  not  very  far  from  George  Meredith,  who 
indeed,  I  think,  loved  him.  It  was,  of  course, 
as  I  have  said,  through  Maitland  that  I  first  met 
Meredith.  For  some  reason  which  I  do  not 
know,  Maitland  gave  him  a  volume  of  mine, 
'The  Western  Trail,"  which  the  old  writer  was 
much  pleased  with.  Indeed  it  was  in  conse- 
quence of  his  liking  for  that  book  that  he  asked 
me  to  dine  with  him  just  before  I  went  to  Africa. 
Maitland  was  not  present  at  this  dinner,  he  was 
then  still  in  Warwickshire;  but  Meredith  spoke 
very  affectionately  of  him,  and  said  many  things 


224  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

not  unpleasing  about  his  work.  But  probably 
Meredith,  like  myself,  thought  more  of  the  man 
than  he  did  of  his  books,  which  is  indeed  from 
my  point  of  view  a  considerable  and  proper 
tribute  to  any  writer.  Sometimes  the  work  of  a 
man  is  greater  than  himself,  and  it  seems  a  pity 

when  one  meets  him ;  but  if  a  man  is  greater  than  \ 

what  he  does  one  may  always  expect  more,  and  ' 

some  day  may  get  it.     It  was  apropos  of  Mait-  i 
land,  in  some  way  which  I  cannot  exactly  recall, 

that  Meredith,  who  was  in  great  form  that  night,  i; 

and  wonderful  in  monologue — as  he  always  was,  i< 

more  especially  after  he  became  so  deaf  that  it  [j 

was  hard  to  make  him  hear — told  us  an  admira-  f 

bly  characteristic  story  about  two  poor  school-  |«j 

boys.     It  appeared,  said  Meredith,  that,  these  | 

two  boys,  who  came  of  a  clever  but  poverty-  I 

stricken  house,  did  very  badly  at  their  school  p 

because  they  were  underfed.     As  Meredith  ex-  ^ 

plained  this  want  of  food  led  to  a  poor  circula-  | 

tion.     What  blood  these  poor  boys  had  was  re-  | 

quired  for  the  animal  processes  of  living,  and  did  H 

not  enable  them  to  carry  on  the  work  of  the  brain  j' 

in  the  way  that  it  should  have  done.     However,  j 

it  one  day  happened  that  during  play  one  of  |. 

these  boys  was  induced  to  stand  upon  his  head,  [ 

with  the  result  that  the  blood  naturally  gravi-  jl 

tated  to  that  unaccustomed  quarter.     His  ideas  ,' 

instantly  became  brilliant — so  brilliant,  indeed,  |j 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         225 

!  that  a  great  idea  struck  him.     He  resumed  his 

1  feet,  rushed  home,  and  communicated  his  dis- 
covery to  his  brother,  and  henceforward  they 
conducted    their    studies    standing    upon    their 

>i  heads,  and  became  brilliant  and  visibly  success- 
ful men.  Of  course  it  vs^as  a  curious  thing, 
though  not  so  curious  when  one  reflects  on  the 
nature  of  men  who  are  really  men  of  letters,  that 
Meredith  and  Henry  Maitland  had  one  thing 
tremendously  in  common,  their  love  of  words. 
In  my  conversation  v^ith  Meredith  that  day  I 
mentioned  the  fact  that  I  had  read  a  certain  in- 
terview with  him.  I  asked  him  whether  it  con- 
veyed his  sentiments  with  any  accuracy.  He  re- 
plied mournfully:  "Yes,  yes, — no  doubt  the 
poor  fellow  got  down  more  or  less  what  I  meant, 
but  he  used  none  of  my  beautiful  words,  none  of 
my  beautiful  words!" 

I  It  does  not  seem  unnatural  to  me  to  say  some- 
thing of  George  Meredith,  since  he  had  in  many 
ways  an  influence  on  Maitland.  Certainly  when 
it  came  to  the  question  of  beautiful  words  they 
were  on  the  same  ground,  if  not  on  the  same 
level.  I  myself  have  met  during  my  literary 
life,  and  in  some  parts  of  the  world  where  lit- 
erature is  little  considered,  many  men  who  were 
reputed  great,  and  indeed  were  great,  it  may  be, 
in  some  special  line,  yet  Meredith  was  the  only 
man  I  ever  knew  to  whom  I  would  have  allowed 


226  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

freely  the  word  "great"  the  moment  I  met  him, 
without  any  reservation.  This  I  said  to  Mait- 
land  and  he  smiled,  feeling  that  it  was  true.  I 
remember  he  wrote  to  Lake  about  Meredith, 
saying:  ''You  ought  to  read  'Richard  Feverel,' 
'Evan  Harrington,'  'The  Egoist,'  and  'Diana  of 
the  Crossways.'  These,  in  my  opinion,  are  de- 
cidedly his  best  books,  but  you  won't  take  up  any- 
thing of  his  without  finding  strong  work."  And 
"strong  work"  with  Maitland  was  very  high 
praise  indeed. 

By  now,  when  he  was  once  more  in  Surrey,  we 
did  not  meet  so  infrequently  as  had  been  the  case 
after  his  second  marriage  and  before  the  sep- 
aration. It  is  true  that  his  living  out  of  Lon- 
don made  a  difference.  Still  I  now  went  down 
sometimes  and  stayed  a  day  with  him.  We 
talked  once  more  in  something  of  our  old  man- 
ner about  books  and  words,  the  life  of  men  of 
letters,  and  literary  origins  or  pedigrees,  always 
a  strong  point  in  him.  It  was  ever  a  great  joy 
to  Maitland  when  he  discovered  the  influence  of 
one  writer  upon  another.  For  instance,  it  was 
he  who  pointed  out  to  me  first  that  Balzac  was 
the  literary  parent  of  Murger,  as  none  indeed 
can  deny  who  have  read  the  chapter  in  "Illusions 
Perdues"  where  Lucien  Rubempre  writes  and 
sings  the  drinking  song  with  tears  in  his  eyes  as 
he  sits  by  the  bedside  of  Coralie,  his  dead  mis-   | 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         227 

tress.  This  he  did,  as  will  be  remembered,  to 
obtain  by  the  sale  of  the  song  sufficient  money 
to  bury  her.  From  that  chapter  undoubtedly 
sprang  the  whole  of  the  ^'Vie  de  Boheme," 
though  to  it  Murger  added  much,  and  not  least 
his  livelier  sense  of  humour.  Again,  I  well  re- 
member how  Maitland  took  down  Tennyson — 
ever  a  joy  to  him,  because  Tennyson  was  a  mas- 
ter of  words  though  he  had  little  enough  to  say 
— and  showed  me  the  influence  that  the  "Wis- 
dom of  Solomon,"  in  the  Apocrypha,  had  upon 
some  of  the  last  verses  of  "The  Palace  of  Art." 
No  doubt  some  will  not  see  in  a  mere  epithet  or 
two  that  Solomon's  words  had  any  connection 
mth  the  work  of  the  Poet-Laureate,  whom  I 
nicknamed,  somewhat  to  Maitland's  irritation, 
^the  bourgeois  Chrysostom."  Yet  I  myself  have 
10  doubt  that  Maitland  was  right;  but  even  if 
le  were  not  he  would  still  have  taken  wonderful 
ioy  in  finding  out  the  words  of  the  two  verses 
A^hich  run :  "Whether  it  were  a  whistling  wind, 
or  a  melodious  noise  of  birds  among  the  spread- 
ng  branches,  or  a  pleasant  fall  of  water  running 
/iolently,  or  a  terrible  sound  of  stones  cast  down, 
)r  a  running  that  could  not  be  seen  of  skipping 
leasts,  or  a  roaring  voice  of  most  savage  wild 
leasts,  or  a  rebounding  echo  from  the  hollow 
nountains;  these  things  made  them  swoon  for 
:ear."     Of    course   he   loved    all    rhythm,    and 


228  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

found  it  sometimes  in  unexpected  places,  even  in 
unconsidered  writers.  There  was  one  passage 
he  used  to  quote  from  Mrs.  Ewing,  who,  indeed, 
was  no  small  writer,  which  he  declared  to  be 
wonderful,  and  in  its  way  quite  perfect:  "He 
sat,  patient  of  each  succeeding  sunset,  until  this 
aged  world  should  crumble  to  its  close."  Then, 
again,  he  rejoiced  when  I  discovered,  though  no 
doubt  it  had  been  discovered  many  times  before, 
that  his  musical  Keats  owed  so  much  to  Fletch- 
er's ''Faithful  Shepherdess." 

It  would  be  a  very  difficult  question  to  ask,  in 
some  examination  concerning  English  literature, 
what  book  in  English  by  its  very  nature  and 
style  appealed  most  of  all  to  Henry  Maitland. 
I  think  I  am  not  wrong  when  I  say  that  it  was 
undoubtedly  Walter  Savage  Landor's  ''Imagi- 
nary Conversations."  That  book  possesses  to 
the  full  the  two  great  qualities  which  most  de- 
lighted him.  It  is  redolent  of  the  past,  and 
those  classic  conversations  were  his  chief  joy;  but 
above  and  beyond  this  true  and  great  feeling  of 
Landor's  for  the  past  classic  times  there  was  the 
most  eminent  quality  of  Landor's  rhythm.  I 
have  many  times  heard  Maitland  read  aloud 
from  "^sop  and  Rhodope,"  and  I  have  even 
more  often  heard  him  quote  without  the  book 
the  passage  which  runs:  "There  are  no  fields 
of  amaranth  on  this  side  of  the  grave;  there  are 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         229 

no  voices,  O  Rhodope,  that  are  not  soon  mute, 
however  tuneful;  there  is  no  name,  with  what- 
ever emphasis  of  passionate  love  repeated  of 
which  the  echo  is  not  faint  at  last."  Maitland 
knew,  and  none  knew  better,  that  in  a  triumphant 
passage  there  is  triumphant  rhythm,  and  in  a 
passage  full  of  mourning  or  melancholy  the  ac- 
companying and  native  rhythm  is  both  melan- 
choly and  mournful.  How  many  times,  too,  I 
have  heard  him  quote,  again  from  Landor, 
^'Many  flowers  must  perish  ere  a  grain  of  corn 
be  ripened." 

All  this  time  the  wife  was  I  know  not  where, 
nor  did  I  trouble  much  to  inquire.  Miss  King- 
don  and  Miss  Greathead  looked  after  her  very 
patiently,  and  did  good  work  for  their  friend 
Maitland,  as  he  well  knew.  But  although  he 
was  rejoiced  to  be  alone  for  a  time,  or  at  any  rate 
relieved  from  the  violent  misery  of  her  presence, 
I  came  once  more  to  discern,  both  from  things 
he  said  and  from  things  he  wrote  to  me,  that  a 
celibate  life  began  again  to  oppress  him  gravely. 
Yet  it  was  many  months  before  he  at  last  con- 
fided in  me  fully,  and  then  I  think  he  only  did  it 
because  he  was  certain  that  I  was  the  one  friend 
he  possessed  with  whom  he  could  discuss  any 
question  without  danger  of  moral  theories  or 
prepossessions  interfering  with  the  rightful  solu- 
tion.    Over  and  beyond  this  qualification  for  his 


230  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE  | 

confidence  there  was  the  fact  that  I  knew  him, 
whereas  no  one  else  did.  To  advise  any  man  it 
is  necessary  to  know  the  man  who  is  to  be  advised, 
for  wisdom  in  vacuo  or  in  vitro  may  be  noth- 
ing but  foolishness.  Others  would  have  said  to 
him,  ^'Look  back  on  your  experience  and  reflect. 
Have  no  more  to  do  with  women  in  any  way." 
No  doubt  it  would  have  been  good  advice,  but  it 
would  have  been  impossible  for  him  to  acton  it. 
Therefore  when  he  at  last  opened  his  mind  to  me 
and  told  me  of  certain  new  prospects  which  were 
disclosing  themselves  to  him,  I  was  not  only 
sympathetic  but  encouraging.  It  seems  that  in 
the  year  1898  he  first  met  a  young  French  lady 
of  Spanish  origin  with  whom  he  had  previously 
corresponded  for  some  little  time.  Her  name 
was  Therese  Espinel.  She  belonged  to  a  very 
good  family,  perhaps  somewhat  above  the  haute 
bourgeoisie,  and  was  a  woman  of  high  education 
and  extreme  Gallic  intelligence.  As  I  came  to 
know  her  afterwards  I  may  also  say  that  she  was 
a  very  beautiful  woman,  and  possessed,  what  I 
know  to  have  been  a  very  great  charm  to  Mait- 
land,  as  it  always  was  to  me,  a  very  sweet  and 
harmonious  voice — it  was  perhaps  the  most 
beautiful  human  voice  for  speaking  that  I  have 
ever  heard.  Years  afterwards  I  took  her  to  see 
George  Meredith.  He  kissed  her  hand  and  told 
her  she  had  beautiful  eyes.     As  she  was  partly 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         231 

Spanish  she  knew  Spanish  well.  Her  German 
was  excellent,  her  English  that  of  an  educated 
Englishwoman.  It  appears  that  she  came  across 
Maitland's  "Paternoster  Row,"  and  it  occurred 
to  her  that  it  should  be  translated  into  French. 
She  got  into  correspondence  with  him  about  this 
book,  and  in  1898  came  over  to  England  and 
made  his  acquaintance.  It  is  curious  to  remem- 
ber that  on  one  other  occasion  Maitland  got  into 
correspondence  with  another  French  lady,  who 
insisted  emphatically  that  he  was  the  one  person 
whom  she  could  trust  to  direct  her  aright  in  life 
— a  notion  at  the  time  not  a  little  comical  to  me, 
and  also  to  the  man  who  was  to  be  this  souPs  di- 
rector. 

When  these  two  people  met  and  proved 
mutually  sympathetic  it  was  not  unnatural  that 
he  should  tell  her  something  of  his  own  life,  es- 
pecially when  one  knows  that  so  much  of  their 
earlier  talks  dealt  with  "Paternoster  Row"  and 
with  its  chief  character,  so  essentially  Henry 
Maitland.  He  gave  her,  indeed,  very  much  of 
his  story,  yet  not  all  of  it,  not,  indeed,  the  chief 
part  of  it,  since  the  greatest  event  in  his  life  was 
the  early  disaster  which  had  maimed  and  dis- 
torted his  natural  career  and  development.  Yet 
even  so  much  as  he  told  her  of  his  first  and  sec- 
ond marriage — for  he  by  no  means  concealed 
from  the  beginning  that  he  was  yet  married — 


232  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

very  naturally  engaged  her  womanly  compassion. 
Adding  this  to  her  real  and  fervent  admiration 
of  his  literary  powers,  his  personality  and  story 
seem  to  have  inclined  her  to  take  an  even  ten- 
derer interest  in  him.  She  was  certainly  a 
bright  and  wonderful  creature,  although  not 
without  a  certain  native  melancholy,  and  pos- 
sessed none  of  those  conventional  ideas  which 
wreck  some  lives  and  save  others  from  disaster. 
Therefore  I  was  not  much  surprised,  although 
I  had  not  been  told  everything  that  had  hap- 
pened, when  Maitland  wrote  to  me  that  he  con- 
templated taking  a  very  serious  step.  It  was 
indeed  a  very  serious  one,  but  so  natural  in  the 
circumstances,  as  I  came  to  hear  of  them,  that  I 
myself  made  no  strictures  on  his  scheme.  It 
was  no  other  than  the  proposal  that  he  and  this 
new  acquaintance  of  his  should  cast  in  their  lot 
together  and  make  the  world  and  her  relatives 
believe  that  they  were  married.  No  doubt  when 
I  was  consulted  I  found  it  in  some  ways  difficult 
to  give  a  decision.  What  might  be  advisable  for 
the  man  might  not  be  so  advisable  for  his  pro- 
posed partner.  He  was  making  no  sacrifice, 
and  she  was  making  many.  Nevertheless,  I 
hold  the  view  that  these  matters  are  matters  for 
the  people  concerned  and  are  nobody  else's  busi- 
ness. The  thing  to  be  considered  from  my  point 
of  view  was  whether  Maitland  would  be  able  to 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         233 

support  her,  and  whether  she  was  the  kind  of 
woman  who  would  retain  her  hold  upon  him  and 
give  him  some  peace  and  happiness  towards  the 
end  of  his  life.  In  thinking  over  these  things  I 
remembered  that  the  other  two  women  had  not 
been  ladies.  They  had  not  been  educated. 
They  understood  nothing  of  the  world  which 
was  Maitland's  world,  and,  as  I  knew,  a  dis- 
aster was  bound  to  come  in  both  cases.  But  now 
it  appeared  to  me  that  there  was  a  possible  hope 
for  the  man,  and  a  hope  that  such  a  step  might 
almost  certainly  end  in  happiness,  or  at  any  rate 
in  peace.  That  something  of  the  kind  would 
occur  I  knew,  and  even  if  this  present  affair  went 
no  farther,  yet  some  other  woman  would  have  to 
be  dealt  with  even  if  she  did  not  come  into  his 
life  for  a  long  while.  Therese  Espinel  was  at 
any  rate,  as  I  have  said,  beautiful  and  accom- 
plished, essentially  of  the  upper  classes,  and, 
what  was  no  small  thing  from  Maitland's  point 
of  view,  a  capable  and  feeling  musician.  Of 
such  a  woman  Maitland  had  had  only  a  few 
weeks'  experience  many  years  before.  I  thought 
the  situation  promised  much,  and  raised  no 
moral  objection  to  the  step  he  proposed  to  take 
as  soon  as  I  saw  he  was  strongly  bent  in  one  di- 
rection. For  one  thing  I  was  sure  of,  and  it  was 
that  anything  whatever  which  put  a  definite  ob- 
stacle in  the  way  of  his  returning  to  his  wife  was 


234  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

a  thing  to  be  encouraged.     It  was,  in  fact,  ab- 
solutely a  duty;  and  I  care  not  what  comments  if 
may  be  made  upon  my  attitude  or  my  morals,      l 
That  Maitland  would  have  gone  back  to  his  ti 
wife  eventually  I  have  very  little  doubt,  and  of  ' 
course  nothing  but  disaster  and  new  rage  and 
misery  would  have  come  of  his  doing  so.     For 
these  reasons  I  did  everything  in  my  power  to 
help  and  encourage  him  in  a  matter  which  gave 
him  extreme  nervousness  and  anxiety.     I  know 
he  said  to  me  that  the  step  he  proposed  to  take 
early  in  1899  grew  more  and  more  serious  the 
more  he  thought  of  it.     Again,  I  think  there  was 
no  overwhelming  passion   at  the  back  of  his 
mind.     Yet  it  was  a  true  and  sincere  affection,  i 
of  that  I  am  sure.     But  there  were  many  diffi-  I 
culties.     It  appears  that  the  girl's  father  had  i 
died  a  few  months  before,  and  as  there  was  some  i 
money  in  the  family  this  fact  involved  certain  1 
serious  difficulties  about  the  future  signing  of  j 
names  when  all  the  legal  questions  concerned  j 
with  the  little  property  that  there  was  came  to  \ 
be  settled.     Then  he  asked  me  what  sort  of  hope  i 
was  there  that  this  pretended  marriage  would  not  | 
become  known  in  England.     He  said:     *T  fear  I 
it  certainly  would."     When  I  reflect  now  upon  j 
the  innumerable  lies  and  subterfuges  that  I  my-  ; 
self  indulged  in  with  the  view  of  preventing  any-  I 
body  knowing  of  this  affair  in  London,  I  can 


1 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         235 

i  see  he  was  perfectly  justified  in  his  fears,  for 
when  the  step  was  at  last  taken  I  was  continually 
being  asked  about  Maitland's  wife.  Naturally 
enough,  it  was  said  by  one  set  of  people  that  she 
was  with  him  in  France;  while  it  was  said  by 

i  others,  much  better  informed,  that  she  was  still 
in  England.  I  was  sometimes  requested  to  set- 
tle this  difficult  matter,  and  I  did  find  it  so  diffi- 
cult that  at  times  I  was  compelled  to  state  the 
actual  truth  on  condition  that  what  I  said  was  re- 
garded as  absolutely  confidential. 

He  and  Therese  did,  indeed,  discuss  the  possi- 
bility of  braving  the  world  with  the  simple  truth, 
but  that  he  knew  would  have  been  a  very  tre- 
mendous step  for  her.  The  mother  was  yet 
living,  and  she  played  a  strange  part  in  this  lit- 
tle drama — a  part  not  so  uncommonly  played  as 
many  might  think.  She  became  at  last  her 
daughter's  confidante  and  learned  the  whole  of 
Maitland's  story,  and  although  she  opposed  their 
solution  of  the  trouble  to  the  very  best  of  her 
power,  when  it  became  serious  she  at  last  gave 
way  and  consented  to  any  step  that  her  daughter 
wished  to  take,  provided  that  there  was  no  public 
scandal. 

Of  course,  many  people  will  regard  with  hor- 
ror the  part  that  her  mother  played  in  this 
drama,  imputing  much  moral  blame.  There 
are,  however,  times  when  current  morality  has 


236  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

not  the  value  which  it  is  commonly  giveh,  and  I 
think  Madame  Espinel  acted  with  great  wisdom, 
seeing  that  nothing  she  could  have  pleaded 
would  have  altered  matters.  Her  daughter  was 
no  longer  a  child ;  she  was  a  grown-up  woman, 
not  without  determination,  and  entirely  without 
religious  prejudice,  a  thing  not  so  uncommon 
with  the  intellectual  Frenchwoman.  Certainly 
there  are  some  who  will  say  that  a  public  scandal 
was  better  than  secrecy,  and  in  this  I  am  at  one 
with  them.  Nevertheless  there  was  much  to 
consider,  for  there  would  certainly  have  been 
what  Henry  himself  called  ^'a  horrific  scandal," 
seeing  that  the  family  had  many  aristocratic  rel- 
atives. Maitland,  in  fact,  stated  that  it  would 
be  taking  an  even  greater  responsibility  than  he 
w^as  prepared  to  shoulder  if  this  were  done.  He 
wrote  to  me  asking  for  my  opinion  and  counsel, 
especially  at  the  time  when  there  was  a  vague 
and  probably  unfounded  suggestion  that  he 
might  be  able  to  get  a  divorce  from  his  wife.  It 
appears  more  than  one  person  wrote  to  him 
anonymously  about  her.  I  am  sure  he  never  be- 
lieved what  they  told  him,  nor  do  I.  No  doubt 
from  some  points  of  view  I  have  been  very  un- 
just to  his  wife,  though  I  have  tried  to  hold  the 
balance  true,  but  I  never  saw,  or  heard  from 
Maitland,  anything  to  suggest  that  his  wife  was 
not  all  that  she  should  have  been  in  one  way,  just 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND  237 

as  she  was  everything  she  should  not  have  been 
in  another.  Seeing  that  Maitland  would  have 
given  ten  years  of  his  life  and  every  penny  he 
possessed  to  secure  a  divorce,  it  is  certain  that  he 
absolutely  disbelieved  what  he  was  told.  In 
fact,  if  he  could  have  got  a  divorce  by  consent  or 
collusion  he  would  have  gladly  engaged  to  pay 
her  fifty  pounds  a  year  during  his  life,  whatever 
happened  and  whatever  she  did.  But  of  course 
this  could  not  be  said  openly,  either  by  myself  or 
by  him,  and  nothing  came  out  of  the  suggestion, 
whoever  made  it  first. 

I  proposed  to  him  one  afternoon  when  I  was 
with  him  that  he  should  make  some  inquiries  as 
to  what  an  American  divorce  would  do  for  him. 
Whether  it  were  valid  or  not,  it  might  perhaps 
make  things  technically  easier  and  enable  him  to 
marry  in  France  with  some  show  of  legality.  At 
the  moment  he  paid  no  attention  to  what  I  said, 
or  seemed  to  pay  no  attention,  but  it  must  have 
sunk  into  his  mind,  for  a  few  days  afterwards  he 
wrote  to  me  and  said:  ''Is  it  a  possible  thing  to 
get  a  divorce  in  some  other  country  as  things  are? 
— a  divorce  which  would  allow  of  a  legal  mar- 
riage, say,  in  that  same  country.  I  have  vaguely 
heard  such  stories,  especially  of  Heligoland. 
The  German  novelist,  Sacher  Masoch,  is  said  to 
have  done  it — said  so  by  his  first  wife,  who  now 
lives  in  Paris.''     Upon  receiving  this  letter  of  his 


238  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

I  wrote  and  reminded  him  of  what  I  had  said 
about  American  divorces,  and  gave  him  all  the 
information  that  I  had  in  my  mind  and  could  col- 
lect at  the  moment,  especially  mentioning  Dakota 
or  Nevada  as  two  States  of  the  United  States 
which  had  the  most  reasonable  and  wide-minded 
views  of  marriage  and  divorce.  For  this  letter 
he  wrote  and  thanked  me  heartily,  but  quoted 
from  a  letter  of  Therese  which  seemed  to  indi- 
cate, not  unclearly,  that  she  preferred  him  to  take 
no  steps  which  might  lead  to  long  legal  processes. 
They  should  join  their  fortunes  together,  taking 
their  chance  as  to  the  actual  state  of  affairs  being 
discovered  afterwards.  His  great  trouble,  of 
course,  was  the  absolute  necessity  of  seeming  in 
Paris  to  be  legally  married,  out  of  regard  for  her 
relatives.  Besides  these  connections  of  her  fam- 
ily, she  knew  a  very  great  number  of  important 
people  in  Paris  and  Madrid,  and  many  of  them 
should  receive  by  custom  the  lettres  de  faire  part. 
With  some  little  trouble  the  financial  difficulties 
with  regard  to  the  signing  of  documents  were  got 
over  for  the  moment  by  a  transfer  of  investments 
from  Therese  to  her  mother.  On  this  being  done 
their  final  determination  was  soon  taken,  and  they 
determined,  after  this  ^'marriage"  was  com- 
pleted, to  leave  Paris  and  live  somewhere  in  the 
mountains,  perhaps  in  Savoy;  and  he  then  wrote 
to  me:     ^^You  will  be  the  only  man  in  London 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         239 

who  knows  this  story.  Absolute  silence— it  goes 
without  saying.  If  ever  by  a  slip  of  the  tongue 
you  let  a  remark  fall  that  my  wife  was  dead,  tant 
mieux;  only  no  needless  approach  of  the  topic. 
A  grave,  grave  responsibility  mine.  She  is  a 
woman  to  go  through  fire  for,  as  you  saw.  An 
incredible  woman  to  one  who  has  spent  his  life 
with  such  creatures.  ...  I  have  lately  paid  a 
bill  of  one  pound  for  damage  done  by  my  wife, 
damage  in  a  London  house  where  she  lived  till 
turned  out  by  the  help  of  the  police.  Incredible 
stories  about  her.  She  attacked  the  landlord 
with  a  stick,  and  he  had  seriously  to  defend  him- 
self. Then  she  tore  up  shrubs  and  creepers  in 
the  garden.  No,  I  have  had  my  time  of  m.isery. 
It  must  come  to  an  end." 

In  the  first  part  of  this  letter  which  I  have  just 
quoted  he  says,  ''She  is  a  woman  to  go  through 
fire  for,  as  you  saw."  This  expression  does  not 
mean  that  I  had  ever  met  her,  but  that  I  had  seen 
sufficient  of  her  letters  to  recognise  the  essential 
fineness  of  her  character.  I  urged  him  once 
more  to  a  rapid  decision,  and  he  promised  that 
he  would  let  nothing  delay  it.  Nevertheless  it 
is  perfectly  characteristic  of  him  that,  having 
now  finally  decided  there  should  be  no  attempt 
at  any  divorce,  he  proceeded  instantly  to  play 
with  the  idea  again.  No  doubt  he  was  being 
subjected  to  many  influences  of  different  kinds, 


240  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE  ! ! 

for  I  find  that  he  sent  me  a  letter  in  which  he  told'  '} 
me  that  it  seemed  to  be  ascertained  that  an'  [, 
American  divorce  and  remarriage  would  satisfyj  f 
French  law.  If  that  was  so,  he  would  move'f 
heaven  and  earth  to  get  all  the  necessary  details  1 1 
of  the  procedure.  He  had  written  to  a  friend  ini 
Baltimore  who  knew  all  about  such  matters,  but 
he  implored  me  to  find  out  if  there  were  not  some 
book  which  gave  all  possible  information  about 
the  marriage  and  divorce  laws  of  all  the  separate 
States  of  North  America.  He  asked:  ''Do  you 
really  think  that  I  can  go  and  present  myself  for 
a  divorce  without  the  knowledge  of  the  other  per- 
son? The  proceedings  must  be  very  astound- 
ing." His  knowledge  of  America  vv^as  not  equal  11 
to  my  own,  much  as  I  had  spoken  to  him  about  \i 
that  country.  The  proceedings  in  divorce  courts  j 
in  some  of  the  United  States  have  long  ceased  to  j ! 
astonish  anybody.  He  told  me,  however,  that  he  '  \ 
had  actually  heard  of  American  lawyers  adver-  !i 
tising  for  would-be  divorcers,  and  he  prayed  de-  \\ 
voutly  that  he  could  get  hold  of  such  a  man.  I  '| 
did  my  best  to  rake  up  for  him  every  possible  ( 
piece  of  information  on  the  subject,  and  no  doubt  ,j 
his  friend  in  Baltimore,  of  whom  I  know  noth-  'i 
ing,  on  his  part  sent  him  information.  It  seemed,  j' 
however,  that  any  proceeding  would  involve  i! 
some  difficulties,  and  on  discovering  this  he  in-  '; 
stantly  dropped  the  whole  scheme.     I  find  that  tl 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         241 

tjij|ie  wrote  to  me  afterwards,  saying:     ''It  is  prob- 

jjjible  that  I  leave  England  at  the  end  of  April. 

j;fiiNot  one  syllable  about  me  to  any  one,  of  course. 
I  The  step  is  so  bold  as  to  be  really  impudent,  and 

ijil  often  have  serious  fears,  not,  of  course,  on  my 
3wn  account.  You  shall  hear  from  abroad.  .  .  . 
If  some  day  one  could  know  tranquillity  and  all 
meet  together  decently." 

After  many  qualms,  hot  and  cold  fits,  despond- 
:ency,  and  inspirations  of  courage,  he  at  last  took 

^^1  the  decisive  step.  In  May  he  was  in  Paris,  and  I 
think  it  was  in  that  month  that  the  "marriage" 

J  took  place.  I  am  singularly  ignorant  of  the  de- 
tails, for  he  seemed  to  be  somewhat  reluctant  to 
speak  of  them,  and  I  do  not  even  know  whether 
any  actual  ceremony  took  place  or  not,  nor  am  I 
much  concerned  to  know.  They  were  at  any  rate 
together,  and  no  doubt  tolerably  happy.  He 
wrote  me  nothing  either  about  this  subject  or  any- 
thing else  for  some  time,  and  I  was  content  to 
hear  nothing.  I  do  know,  however,  that  they 
spent  the  summer  together  in  Switzerland,  mov- 
ing from  Trient,  near  the  Col  de  Balme,  to  Lo- 
carno, on  Lago  Maggiore.  He  wrote  to  me  once 
from  the  Rhone  Valley  saying  that  as  a  result  of 
his  new  domestic  peace  and  comfort,  even  though 
it  were  but  the  comfort  of  Swiss  hotels,  and 
owing  also  to  the  air  of  the  mountains,  which  al- 
ways suited  him  very  well,  he  was  in  much  better 


242  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 


I!! 


health  than  he  had  been  for  years  past.     His 
lung,  the  perpetual  subject  of  his  preoccupation, 
appears  to  have  given  him  little  trouble,  al- 
though, knowing  that  its  state  was  attributable 
in  some  measure  to  emphysema,  he  wrote  to  me 
for  detailed  explanations  of  that  particular  com-  i 
plaint.     During  the  whole  of  this  time,  the  only  i 
honeymoon  he  had  ever  had,  he  was,  however,|^ 
obliged  to  work  very  hard,  for  he  was  in  cease- ^i 
less  trouble  about  money.     In  his  own  words,  he,' 
had  to  ^'publish  furiously"  in  order  to  keep  pace 
with  his  expenses.     There  was  his  wife  in  Eng- 
land, and  there  were  also  his  children  to  be  par- 
tially provided  for.     But  for  the  time  all  went 
well  with  him.     There  were  fears  of  all  sorts,  he 
told  me,  but  they  were  to  be  forgotten  as  much 
as  possible.     He  and  Therese  returned  to  Paris 
for  the  winter. 

During  this  time,  or  just  about  this  time,' 
which  was  when  the  South  African  War  wasii 
raging,  I  wrote  for  a  weekly  journal,  which  Ij 
used  to  send  regularly  to  Paris  with  my  own  con- » 
tributions  marked  in  it.  This  temporary  aber- : 
ration  into  journalism  so  late  in  my  literary  life  ' 
interested  him  much.  He  wrote  to  me:  ^Tnl 
the  old  garret  days  who  would  have  imagined  i 
the  strange  present?  I  suppose  you  have  now  a 
very  solid  footing  in  journalism  as  well  as  in  fie-  j 
tion.     Of  course  it  was  wise  to  get  it,  as  it  seems  i 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         243 

more  than  probable  that  the  novelists  will  be 
starved  out  very  soon.  With  Europe  in  a  state 
of  war,  which  may  last  for  a  decennium,  there 
will  be  little  chance  for  story-tellers."  Then,  in 
spite  of  his  new  happiness,  his  inherited  or  ac- 
quired pessimism  got  the  worst  of  him.  He 
adds:  'T  wish  I  had  died  ten  years  ago.  I 
should  have  gone  away  with  some  hope  for  civi- 
lisation, of  which  I  now  have  none.  One's 
choice  seems  to  be  between  death  in  the  work- 
house, or  by  some  ruffian's  bullet.  As  for  those 
who  come  after  one,  it  is  too  black  to  think 
about." 

No  doubt  this  was  only  his  fun,  or  partly  such. 
There  is  one  phrase  in  Boswell's  "Johnson"  that 
he  always  loved  amazingly;  it  is  where  Johnson 
declares  that  some  poor  creature  had  "no  skill  in 
inebriation."  Maitland  perhaps  had  no  skill  in 
inebriation  when  he  drank  at  the  fountain  of 
literary  pessimism,  for  indeed  when  he  did  drink 
there  his  views  were  fantastic  and  preposterous. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  he  was  doing  very  well,  in 
spite  of  the  workhouse  in  Marylebone  Road, 
from  which  he  was  now  far  enough.  There 
might  be  little  chance  for  story-tellers,  yet  his 
financial  position,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life, 
was  tolerably  sound.  One  publisher  even  gave 
him  three  hundred  pounds  on  account  for  a  book 
which  I  think  was  "The  Best  of  all  Things." 


f 

244  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

For  this  book  he  also  received  five  hundred  dol- 
lars from  America;  so,  for  him,  or  indeed  for 
almost  any  writer,  he  was  very  well  paid.    Little 
as  the  public  may  believe  it,  a  sum  of  three  hun- 
dred pounds  on  account  of  royalties  is  as  much  as 
any  well-known  man  gets — unless  by  some  chance 
he  happens  to  be  one  of  the  half-dozen  amaz- 
ingly successful  writers  in  the  country^  and  they 
are  by  no  means  the  best.     It  has  been  at  my  ear- 
nest solicitation  that  he  had  at  last  employed  an 
agent,  though,  with  his  peculiar  readiness  to  re- 
ceive certain  impressions,  he  had  not  gone  to  one 
I  recommended,  but  to  another,  suddenly  men- 
tioned to  him  when  he  was  just  in  the  mood  to 
act  as  I  suggested.     This  agent  worked  for  him 
very  well,  and  Maitland  was  now  getting  five 
guineas  a  thousand  words  for  stories,  which  is 
also  a  very  good  price  for  a  man  who  does  really 
good  work.     It  is  true  that  very  bad  work  is  not 
often  well  paid,  but  the  very  best  work  of  all  is 
often  not  to  be  sold  at  any  price.    About  this  time 
I  obtained  for  him  a  very  good  offer  for  a  book, 
and  he  wrote  to  me:     ^'It  is  good  to  know  that 
people  care  to  make  offers  for  my  work.     What 
I  aim  at  is  to  get  a  couple  of  thousand  pounds 
safely  invested  for  my  two  boys.     Probably  I 
shall  not  succeed — and  if  I  get  the  money,  what 
security  have  I  that  it  will  be  safe  in  a  year  or 
two?     As  likely  as  not  the  Bank  of  England  will 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         245 

lie  in  ruins."  After  all,  I  must  confess  that  he 
was  skilful  in  the  inebriation  of  his  pessimism, 
for  to  me  these  phrases  are  delightful,  in  spite  of 
the  half-belief  with  which  they  were  uttered. 

During  the  last  winter  of  1900  he  wrote  to  me 
from  Paris  that  he  proposed  to  be  in  London  for 
a  few  days  in  the  spring  of  1901,  but  much  de- 
pended on  the  relation,  which  seemed  to  him 
highly  speculative,  between  the  money  he  re- 
ceived and  the  money  he  was  obliged  to  spend. 
Apparently  he  found  Paris  anything  but  cheap. 
According  to  his  own  account,  he  was  therefore 
in  perpetual  straits,  in  spite  of  the  good  prices  he 
now  obtained  for  his  work.     He  added  in  this 
letter:     ^'I  hope  to  speak  with  you  once  more, 
before  we  are  both  shot  or  starved."     This  pro- 
posal to  come  across  the  Channel  in  the  spring 
ended  in  smoke.     He  was  not  able  to  afford  it,  or 
was  reluctant  to  move,  or  more  likely  reluctant 
to  expose  himself  to  any  of  the  troubles  still  wait- 
ing for  him  in  England.     So  long  as  his  good 
friends  who  were  looking  after  his  wife,  and 
more  or  less  looking  after  his  children,  could  do 
their  work  and  save  him  from  anxiety,  he  was  not 
likely  to  wish  his  peace  disturbed  by  any  discus- 
sions on  the  subject.     When  he  had  decided  not 
to  come  he  sent  me  a  letter  in  which  one  of  the 
paragraphs  reads:     ^'I  am  still  trying  to  believe 
that  there  is  a  King  of  England,  and  cannot  take 


246  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

to  the  idea,  any  more  than  to  the  moral  and  ma- 
terial ruin  which  seems  to  be  coming  upon  the 
old  country.  Isn't  it  astounding  that  we  have 
the  courage  to  write  books?  We  shall  do  so,  I 
suppose,  until  the  day  when  publishers  find  their 
business  at  an  end.  I  fear  it  may  not  be  far  off." 
At  this  moment,  being  more  or  less  at  peace,  and 
working  with  no  peculiar  difficulty,  he  declared 
himself  in  tolerable  health,  although  he  affirmed 
he  coughed  a  great  deal.  It  seemed  to  me  that 
he  did  not  think  so  much  about  his  health  as  he 
had  done  before  and  was  to  do  later,  and  he  dis- 
played something  like  his  old  real  nature  with 
regard  to  literary  enterprise.  It  was  just  about 
this  time  that  he  reminded  me  of  his  cherished 
project  for  a  story  of  the  sixth  century  A.D.  This, 
of  course,  was  the  book  published  after  his  death, 
^'Basil."  He  had  then  begun  to  work  upon  it, 
and  said  he  hoped  to  finish  it  that  summer.  This 
cheered  him  up  wonderfully,  and  he  ended  one 
letter  to  me  with:  ''Well,  well,  let  us  be  glad 
that  again  we  exchange  letters  with  address  other 
than  that  of  workhouse  or  hospital.  It  is  a  great 
demand,  this,  to  keep  sane  and  solvent — I  dare 
hope  for  nothing  more."  Occasionally  in  his 
letters  there  seemed  to  me  to  be  slight  indications 
that  he  was  perhaps  not  quite  so  happy  as  he 
wished  to  be. 

During  that  summer  my  wife  and  I  were  in 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         247 

Switzerland,  and  he  wrote  to  me,  while  we  were 
on  the  Lake  of  Geneva,  from  Vernet-les-Bains  in 
the  Eastern  Pyrenees.  B^  this  time  Therese  and 
I,  although  we  had  never  met,  were  accustomed 
to  send  messages  to  each  other.  It  was  a  comfort 
to  me  to  feel  that  he  was  with  some  one  of  whom 
I  could  think  pleasantly,  and  whom  I  much 
wished  to  know.  We  had,  indeed,  proposed  to 
meet  somewhere  on  the  Continent,  but  that  fell 
through,  partly  because  we  were  obliged  to  re- 
turn to  England  earlier  than  we  had  proposed. 
Nevertheless,  although  we  did  not  meet,  and 
though  I  had  some  fears  for  him,  I  was  tolerably 
happy  about  him  and  his  afifairs,  and  certainly 
did  not  anticipate  the  new  crisis  which  was  ap- 
proaching, nor  the  form  it  would  take. 


CHAPTER  XI  I 

IT  was  Maitland's  custom  to  rely  for  advice 
and  assistance  on  particular  people  at  cer- 
tain crises.  In  some  cases  he  now  appealed 
to  Rivers ;  in  very  many  he  appealed  to  me ;  bui 
when  his  health  was  particularly  involved  it  was| 
his  custom  to  relapse  desperately  on  his  friend 
Dr.  Lake.  He  even  came  to  Lake  on  his  return 
from  Magna  Graecia  when  he  had  taken  Pots- 
dam on  his  way  home  to  England.  He  had  gone 
there  at  Schmidt's  strong  invitation  and  par-lj 
ticular  desire  that  he  should  taste  for  once  a  real 
Westphalian  ham.  It  is  a  peculiarly  savage  and 
not  wholly  safe  custom  of  Germans  to  eat  such 
hams  uncooked,  and  Maitland,  having  fallen  in| 
with  this  custom,  though  he  escaped  trichinosis, 
procured  for  himself  a  peculiarly  severe  attack  of 
indigestion.  He  came  over  from  Folkestone  tc 
Lake  in  order  to  get  cured.  The  ham  apparently 
had  not  given  him  the  lasting  satisfaction  which 
he  usually  got  out  of  fine  fat  feeding.  As  I  have 
said,  Lake  and  Maitland  had  been  friends  from 
the  time  that  Maitland's  father  bought  his  chem- 
ist's business  from  the  Doctor's  father.    For  they 

248 


HENRY  MAITLAND  249 

had  been  schoolfellows  together  at  Hinkson's 
school  in  Mirefields.  Nevertheless  it  was  only 
in  1894  th^t  th^y  renewed  their  old  acquaintance. 
Dr.  Lake  saw  him  once  at  Ewell,  soon  after  a 
local  practitioner  had  frightened  Maitland  very 
seriously  by  diagnosing  phthisis  and  giving  a 
gloomy  prognosis.  On  that  occasion  Lake  went 
over  Maitland's  chest  and  found  very  little 
wrong.  Technically  speaking,  there  was  per- 
haps a  slight  want  of  expansion  at  the  apex  of 
each  lung,  and  apparently  some  emphysema  at 
the  base  of  the  left  one,  but  certainly  no  active 
tubercular  mischief. 

I  speak  of  these  things  more  or  less  in  detail 
because  health  played  so  great  a  part  in  the 
drama  of  his  life ;  as,  indeed,  it  does  in  most  lives. 
It  is  not  the  casual  thing  that  novelists  mostly 
make  of  it.  It  is  a  perpetually  acting  cause. 
Steady  ill-health,  even  more  than  actually  acute 
disease,  is  what  helps  to  bring  about  most  trage- 
dies. When  Lake  made  his  diagnosis,  with 
which  I  agree,  though  there  is  something  else  I 
must  presently  add  to  it,  he  took  him  to  London, 
that  he  might  see  a  notable  physician,  in  order  to 
reassure  Maitland's  mind  thoroughly.  They 
went  together  to  Dr.  Prior  Smithson.  I  have 
never  noted  that  it  was  Maitland  who  introduced 
Dr.  Lake  to  Rivers.  When  Lake  had  arranged 
this  London  visit  Maitland  wrote  to  Rivers  say- 


250  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

ing:  '^I  am  coming  up  to  town  to  see  a  scoun- 
drel specialist  in  diseases  of  the  lung,  who  is  as 
likely  as  not  to  upset  all  my  plans  of  life.  But 
don't  be  afraid  of  my  company;  you  shall  have 
no  pathology.  There  will  be  with  me  an  old 
schoolfellow  of  mine,  a  country  surgeon,  in 
whose  house  I  am  staying  at  present.  He  would 
think  it  very  delightful  to  meet  you."  They  did 
meet  upon  that  occasion,  when  Dr.  Smithson  con- 
firmed Lake's  diagnosis  and  temporarily  did  a 
great  deal  to  reassure  Maitland.  From  my  own 
medical  knowledge  and  my  general  study  of 
Maitland,  combined  with  what  some  of  his  doc- 
tors have  told  me,  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  he  did  suffer  from  pulmonary  tuberculosis, 
but  that  it  was  practically  arrested  at  an  early 
stage.  However,  even  arrested  tuberculosis  in 
many  cases  leaves  a  very  poor  state  of  nutrition. 
That  his  joy  in  food  remained  with  him,  though 
with  a  few  lapses,  points  strongly  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  at  this  time  tuberculosis  was  certainly 
not  very  active  in  him.  He  always  needed  much 
food,  and  food,  especially,  which  he  liked  and 
desired.  To  want  it  was  a  tragedy,  as  I  shall 
show  presently. 

In  1897  when  he  went  down  to  Salcombe  he 
reported  to  Lake  a  great  improvement  in  health, 
saying  that  his  cough  was  practically  gone,  and 
that  of  course  the  wonderful  weather  accounted 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         251 

for  it.  He  ate  heartily,  and  even  walked  five 
miles  a  day  without  fatigue.  He  added:  ''The 
only  difficulty  is  breathing  through  the  nose. 
The  other  day  a  traction  engine  passed  me  on  the 
road,  and  the  men  upon  it  looked  about  them 
wondering  where  the  strange  noises  came  from. 
It  was  my  snoring!  All  the  nasal  cavities  are 
excoriated !  But  I  shall  get  used  to  this.  I  have 
a  suspicion  that  it  is  not  the  lung  that  accounts  for 
this  difficulty,  for  it  has  been  the  same  ever  since 
I  can  remember."  By  this  he  probably  meant 
merely  that  it  had  lasted  a  long  time.  There  was 
a  specific  reason  for  it.  From  Salcombe  he  re- 
ported to  Lake  that  he  had  recovered  a  great 
deal  of  weight,  but  that  for  some  time  his  wheez- 
ing had  been  worse  than  ever  when  the  weather 
got  very  bad.  He  wrote :  "Then  again  a  prac- 
tical paradox  that  frenzies  one,  for  sleep  came 
when  bad  weather  prevented  me  from  being  so 
much  out  of  doors!"  All  this  he  did  not  under- 
stand, but  it  is  highly  probable  that  at  that  time 
he  had  a  little  actual  tubercular  mischief,  and  a 
slight  rise  of  temperature.  As  frequently  hap- 
pens, enforced  rest  in  the  house  did  for  him  what 
nothing  else  could  do.  But  his  health  certainly 
was  something  of  a  puzzle.  In  1898,  when  he 
was  in  Paris  with  Therese,  he  saw  a  Dr.  Piffard, 
apparently  not  a  lung  specialist,  but,  as  I  am  told, 
a  physician  of  high  standing.     This  doctor  spoke 


252  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 


rather  gravely  to  him,  and  of  course  told  hinii 
that  he  was  working  much  too  hard,  for  he  wa^ 
still  keeping  up  his  ridiculous  habit  of  writin]|j| 
eight  hours  a  day.  He  said  that  there  was 
moist  spot  in  the  right  lung,  with  a  little  chroni«|i 
bronchitis,  and  that  the  emphysema  was  veriS 
obvious.  He  had,  too,  some  chronic  rheuma'ft 
tism,  and  also  on  the  right  side  of  his  foreheac.j 
what  Maitland  described  as  a  patch  of  psoriasis| 
Psoriasis,  however,  is  not  as  a  rule  unilateral^ 
and  it  was  due  to  something  else.  This  patcM 
had  been  there  for  about  a  year,  and  was  slowly 
getting  worse.  Dr.  Piffard  prescribed  touchin^lii 
him  under  the  right  clavicle  with  the  actual  cau 
tery,  and  for  the  skin  gave  him  some  subcutan 
eous  injections  of  an  arsenical  preparation.  Hd^ 
fed  him  with  eggs,  milk,  and  cod-liver  oil,  order  |) 
ing  much  sleep  and  absolute  rest.  During  thiijj 
treatment  he  improved  somewhat,  and  ownecpi 
that  he  was  really  better.  The  cough  had  bee 
come  trifling,  his  breath  was  easier  and  his  sleep')' 
very  good.  His  strength  had  much  increasedjs 
He  also  declared  that  he  saw  a  slight  amelio-ji 
ration  in  the  patch  of  so-called  psoriasis.  Thei! 
truth  is,  I  think,  that  nearly  all  this  improvcmenijj 
was  due  to  making  him  rest  and  eat.  No  doubl-l 
very  much  of  his  ill-health  was  the  result  of  his'i 
abnormal  habits,  although  there  was  something!, 
else  at  the  back  of  it.     For  one  thing  he  had 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         258 

rarely  taken  sufficient  exercise,  the  exercise  neces- 
sary for  his  really  fine  physique.  As  I  have  said, 
he  never  played  a  game  in  his  life  after  he  left 
Hinkson's  school  in  Mirefields.  Cricket  he 
knew  not.  Football  was  a  mystery  to  him,  and 
a  brutal  mystery  at  that.  It  is  true  that  occasion- 
ally he  rowed  in  a  boat  at  the  seaside,  for  he  did 
so  at  Salcombe  when  his  eldest  boy  was  there 
with  him,  but  any  kind  of  game  or  sport  he  ac- 
tually loathed.  It  was  a  surprise  to  me  to  find 
out  that  Rivers,  while  he  was  at  Folkestone,  ac- 
tually persuaded  him  to  take  to  a  bicycle.  He 
even  learned  to  like  it.  Rivers  told  Lake  that 
he  rode  not  badly,  and  with  great  dignity;  and  as 
Rivers  rode  beside  him  he  heard  him  murmur: 
"Marvellous  proceedings!  Was  the  like  ever 
seen?" 

However,  the  time  was  now  coming  when  he 
was  to  appeal  to  Lake  once  more.  In  1901  he 
had  proposed  to  come  over  to  England  and  see 
me,  but  he  said  that  the  doctor  in  Paris  had  for- 
bidden him  to  go  north,  rather  indicating  the 
south  for  him.  He  wrote  to  me :  ''Now  I  must 
go  to  the  centre  of  France — I  don't  think  the 
Alps  are  possible — and  vegetate  among  things 
which  serve  only  to  remind  me  that  here  is  not 
England.  Then,  again,  I  had  thought  night 
and  day  of  an  English  potato,  of  a  slice  of  Eng- 
lish meat,  of  tarts  and  puddings,  and  of  teacakes. 


254  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 


i 


Night  and  day  had  I  looked  forward  to  ravening, 
on  these  things.  Well,  well!"  But  he  did  at 
last  come  back  to  England  for  some  time. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  feeding  in  his 
French  home  was  not  fat,  or  fine,  or  confused 
feeding.  Probably  the  notion  of  a  Scotch  hag- 
gis would  give  any  French  cook  a  fit  of  apoplexy. 
Just  before  he  did  come  over  from  Paris,  Lake 
had  a  letter  from  him  which  was  much  like  the 
one  he  wrote  to  me :  ^'Best  wishes  for  the  merry, 
merry  time, — if  merriment  can  be  in  the  evil 
England  of  these  days.  I  wish  I  could  look  in 
upon  you  at  Christmas.  I  should  roar  with  joy  j 
at  an  honest  bit  of  English  roast  beef.  Could  ) 
you  post  a  slice  in  a  letter? — with  gravy?"  Lake  g 
said  to  his  wife  when  he  received  this  letter:  i 
^ Why,  this  is  written  by  a  starving  man !"  Nat-  1 
urally  enough,  although  I  heard  from  him  com-  i 
paratively  seldom,  I  had  always  been  aware  of  ; 
these  hankerings  of  his  for  England  and  English  ^ 
food.  He  did  not  take  kindly  to  exile,  or  to  the  ; 
culinary  methods  of  a  careful  French  interior.  ; 
Truly  as  he  loved  the  Latin  countries,  there  was  ■ 
much  in  their  customs  which  troubled  him  ; 
greatly,  and  the  food  was  his  especial  trouble  ; 
when  he  was  not  being  fed  in  Italy  with  oil  and  | 
Chianti.  I  find  occasional  melancholy  letters  of  ; 
his  upon  the  subject,  when  he  indulged  in  dithy-  ! 
rambs  about  the  fine  abundance  of  feeding  in  I 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         255 

England — eggs  and  bacon  and  beer.  There  was 
no  doubt  he  was  not  living  in  the  way  he  should 
have  lived.  At  any  rate,  it  was  about  this  time 
— although  I  did  not  know  it,  as  I  was  either  in 
the  North  of  England  or  abroad,  I  forget  which 
— that  he  came  once  more  to  Lake,  and  was  found 
standing  on  his  doorstep  tolerably  early  in  the 
morning.  According  to  the  doctor,  on  his  ar- 
rival from  Paris  he  was  in  the  condition  of  a 
starved  man.  The  proof  of  this  is  very  simple. 
At  that  time,  and  for  long  after,  Rivers  was  liv- 
ing at  Folkestone,  and  as  Lake's  house  was  at 
that  time  full  he  was  unable  to  entertain  Mait- 
land  for  long,  and  it  was  proposed  that  he  should 
go  over  for  a  time  and  stay  at  Folkestone.  When 
Lake  examined  Maitland  he  was  practically  no 
more  than  a  skeleton,  but  after  one  week  in 
Rivers'  house  he  had  picked  up  no  less  than 
seven  pounds  weight.  There  were  then  no  phys- 
ical signs  of  active  mischief  in  the  lungs  except 
the  remaining  and  practically  incurable  patch  of 
emphysema.  Although  this  sudden  increase  of 
weight  does  not  entirely  exclude  tuberculosis,  it 
is  yet  rather  uncommon  for  so  rapid  an  increase 
to  take  place  in  such  cases,  and  it  rather  puts 
tuberculosis  out  of  court  as  being  in  any  way  the 
real  cause  of  much  of  his  ill-health.  Now  of  all 
this  I  knew  very  little,  or  next  door  to  nothing, 
until  afterwards.     Although  I  was  aware  that 


256  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

he  was  uneasy  about  many  things,  I  had  not 
gathered  that  there  was  anything  seriously  wrong 
with  him  except  his  strong  and  almost  irresistible 
desire  to  return  to  England.  I  now  know  that 
his  reticence  in  speaking  to  me  was  due  to  his 
utter  inability  to  confess  that  his  third  venture 
had  almost  come  to  disaster  over  the  mere  matter 
of  the  dining-table.  I  knew  so  much  of  the  past 
that  he  feared  to  tell  me  of  the  present,  though  I 
do  not  think  he  could  have  imagined  that  I 
should  say  anything  to  make  him  feel  that  he  had 
once  again  been  a  sad  fool  for  not  insisting  good- 
humouredly  on  having  the  food  he  wanted.  But 
he  was  ashamed  to  speak  to  me  of  his  difficulties, 
fearing,  perhaps,  that  I  might  not  understand,  or 
understand  too  well. 

Now  he  and  Therese  lived  together  with  Ma- 
dame Espinel.  The  old  lady,  a  very  admirable 
and  delicate  creature  of  an  aristocratic  type,  was 
no  longer  young,  and  was  typically  French.  She 
was  in  a  poor  state  of  health,  and  lived,  like  Cor- 
naro,  on  next  to  nothing.  Her  views  on  food 
were  what  Maitland  would  have  described  as 
highly  exiguous.  She  stood  bravely  by  the 
French  breakfast,  a  thing  Maitland  could  endure 
with  comfort  for  no  more  than  a  week  or  two  at 
a  time.  Her  notions  as  to  the  midday  meal  and 
dinner  were  not  characterised  by  that  early  Eng- 
lish abundance  which  he  so  ardently  desired. 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         257 

After  a  long  period  of  subdued  friction  on  the 
subject  it  appears  that  his  endurance  of  what  he 
called  prolonged  starvation  actually  broke  down. 
He  demanded  something  for  breakfast,  some- 
thing fat,  something  in  the  nature  of  bacon. 
How  this  was  procured  I  do  not  know;  I  pre- 
sume that  bacon  can  be  bought  in  Paris,  though 
I  do  not  remember  having  ever  seen  it  there ;  per- 
haps it  was  imported  from  England  for  his 
especial  benefit.  However  pleasing  for  the  mo- 
ment the  result  may  have  been  to  him  from  the 
gastronomic  point  of  view,  it  led  Madame  Es- 
pinel  to  make  as  he  alleged,  uncalled-for  and 
bitter  remarks  upon  the  English  grossness  of  his 
tastes.  As  he  was  certainly  run  down  and  much 
underfed,  his  nerves  were  starved  too,  and  he  got 
into  one  of  his  sudden  rages  and  practically  ran 
away  from  France.  I  hinted,  or  said,  not  long 
ago  that  he  was  in  a  way  an  intellectual  coward 
because  he  would  never  entertain  any  question 
as  to  the  nature  of  the  universe,  or  of  our  human 
existence  in  it.  Things  were  to  be  taken  as  they 
stood,  and  not  examined,  for  fear  of  pain  or  men- 
tal disturbance.  It  was  a  little  later  than  this 
that  Rivers  said  acutely  to  Lake:  ''Why,  the 
man  is  a  moral  coward.  He  stands  things  up  to 
a  certain  point  and  then  runs  away."  So  now  he 
ran  away  from  French  feeding  to  Lake's  door- 
step, and  Lake,  as  I  have  said,  sent  him  to  Rivers 


258  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

with  the  very  best  results,  for  Mrs.  Rivers  took  a 
great  interest  in  him,  looking  on  him  no  doubt 
as  a  kind  of  foolish  child  of  genius,  and  fed  him, 
by  Lake's  direction,  for  all  that  she  was  worth. 
As  soon  as  he  was  in  anything  like  condition,  or 
getting  on  towards  it,  he  was  unable  to  remain 
any  longer  at  Folkestone  and  proposed  to  return 
once  more  to  France.  This,  however,  the  doctor 
forbade,  and  thinking  that  a  prolonged  course  of 
feeding  and  rest  was  the  one  thing  he  required, 
induced  him  to  go  to  a  sanatorium  in  the  east  of 
England.  At  this  time  Lake  had  practically  no 
belief  whatever  in  the  man  being  tuberculous, 
but  he  used  Maitland's  firm  conviction  that  he 
was  in  that  condition  to  induce  him  to  enter  this 
establishment.  It  was  perhaps  the  best  thing 
which  could  be  done  for  him.  He  was  looked 
after  very  well,  and  the  doctor  at  the  sanatorium 
agreed  with  Lake  in  finding  no  evidence  of  active 
pulmonary  trouble. 

As  I  have  said,  Maitland  kept  much,  or  most, 
of  this  from  me — it  was  very  natural.  He  wrote 
to  me  from  the  sanatorium  very  many  letters, 
from  which  I  shall  not  quote,  as  they  were  after 
all  only  the  natural  moans  of  a  solitary  invalid. 
But  he  forbade  me  to  come  to  him,  and  I  did  not 
insist  on  making  the  visit  which  I  proposed.  I 
was  quite  aware,  if  it  were  only  by  instinct  and 
intuition,  that  he  had  no  desire  for  me  to  discover 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         259 

exactly  how  things  had  been  going  with  him  in 
France.  Nevertheless  I  did  understand  vaguely, 
though  it  was  not  till  afterwards  that  I  dis- 
covered there  had  been  a  suggestion  made  that 
he  should  not  return  there,  or,  indeed,  go  back  to 
the  circumstances  which  had  proved  so  nearly 
disastrous.  I  do  not  think  that  this  suggestion 
was  ever  made  personally  to  him,  although  I  un- 
derstand it  was  discussed  by  some  of  his  friends. 
It  appears  that  a  year  or  so  afterwards  when  he 
was  talking  to  Miss  Kingdon,  she  told  him  that 
it  had  been  thought  possible  that  he  might  not 
return  to  France.  This  he  received  with  much 
amazement  and  indignation,  for  certainly  he  did 
go  back,  and  henceforth  I  believe  the  manage- 
ment of  the  kitchen  was  conducted  on  more 
reasonable  lines.  Certainly  he  recovered  his 
normal  weight,  and  soon  after  his  return  was 
actually  twelve  stone.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  even 
before  he  left  the  sanatorium,  he  protested  that 
he  was  actually  getting  obese. 

He  was  perfectly  conscious  after  these  experi- 
ences at  Folkestone,  and  the  east  of  England,  that 
he  owed  very  much  both  to  Lake  and  Rivers.  In 
fact  he  wrote  to  the  doctor  afterwards,  saying 
that  he  and  Rivers  had  picked  him  out  of  a  very 
swampy  place.  He  had  always  a  great  admi- 
ration for  Rivers  as  a  writer,  and  used  to  marvel 
wonderfully  at  his  success.    It  seemed  an  extraor- 


260  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE  j 

dinary  thing  to  Maitland  that  a  man  could  do  ;j 
good  work  and  succeed  by  it  in  England.  | 

It  was  in  1902  that  Maitland  and  Therese  took  I 
up  their  abode  in  St.  Pee  d'Ascain,  under  the  j 
shadow  of  the  Pyrenees.     From  there  he  wrote  3 
me  very  frequently,  and  seemed  to  be  doing  a  1 
great  deal  of  work.     He  liked  the  place,  and,  as  i 
there  was  an  English  colony  in  the  town,  had  1 
made  not  a  few  friends  or  acquaintances.     By  i 
now  it  was  a  very  long  time  since  I  had  seen  him,  | 
for  we  had  not  met  during  the  time  of  his  illness  j 
in  England;  and  as  I  had  been  very  much  over-   \ 
worked,  it  occurred  to  me  that  three  or  four   { 
days  at  sea,  might  do  something  for  me,  and  that   ! 
I  could  combine  this  with  a  visit  to  my  old  friend.   ^ 
I  did  not,  however,  write  to  him  that  I  was  com-   ^ 
ing.     Knowing  his  ways  and  his  peculiar  nerv-   ] 
ousness,  which  at  this  time  most  visibly  grew   [ 
upon  him,  I  thought  it  best  to  say  nothing  until 
I  actually  came  to  Bordeaux.     When  I  reached 
the  city  on  the  Gironde  I  put  up  at  a  hotel  and 
telegraphed  to  know  whether  he  could  receive 
me.     The   answer   I   got  was   one   word   only, 
*'Venez,"  and  I  went  down  by  the  early  train, 
through  the  melancholy  Landes,  and  came  at  last    | 
to  St.  Pee  by  the  way  of  Bayonne.     He  met  me    ! 
at  the  station — which,  by  the  way,  has  one  of  the    j 
most  beautiful  views  I  know — and  I  found  him 
looking  almost  exactly  as  he  had  looked  before,    ! 

I 
J 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         261 

save  that  he  wore  his  hair  for  the  time  a  little 
differently  from  his  custom  in  order  to  hide  a 
fading  scar  upon  his  forehead,  the  result  of  that 
mysterious  skin  trouble.  We  were,  I  know, 
very  glad  to  meet. 

I  stayed  at  a  little  hotel  by  myself  as  he  could 
not  put  me  up,  but  went  later  to  his  house.  It 
was  now  that  I  at  last  met  Therese.  As  I  have 
said,  she  was  a  very  beautiful  woman,  tall  and 
slender,  of  a  pale,  but  clear  complexion,  very 
melancholy  lovely  eyes,  and  a  voice  that  was 
absolute  music.  I  could  not  help  thinking  that 
he  had  at  last  come  home,  for  at  that  time  my 
knowledge  of  their  little  domestic  difficulties 
owing  to  the  warring  customs  of  their  different 
countries  was  very  vague,  and  she  impressed  me 
greatly.  And  yet  I  knew  before  I  left  that  night 
that  all  was  not  well  with  Maitland,  though  it 
seemed  so  well  with  him.  He  complained  to 
me  when  we  were  alone  about  his  health,  and 
even  then  protested  somewhat  forcibly  against 
the  meals.  The  house  itself,  or  their  apartment, 
was — from  the  foreign  point  of  view — quite 
comfortable,  but  it  did  not  suggest  the  kind  of 
surroundings  which  I  knew  Maitland  loved. 
There  is,  save  in  the  best,  a  certain  air  of  cold 
barrenness  about  so  many  foreign  houses.  The 
absence  of  rugs  or  carpets  and  curtains,  the  pol- 
ish and  exiguity  of  the  furniture,  the  general  air 


262  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

of  having  no  more  in  the  rooms  than  that  which 
will  just  serve  the  purposes  of  life  did  not  suit 
his  sense  of  abundance  and  luxury. 

Blake  has  said,  though  I  doubt  if  I  quote  with 
accuracy:  '^We  do  not  know  that  we  have 
enough  until  we  have  had  too  much/'  and  this  is 
a  saying  of  wisdom  as  well  concerning  the  things 
of  the  mind  as  those  of  the  body.  He  had  had 
at  last  a  little  too  much  domesticity,  and,  be- 
sides that,  his  desires  were  set  towards  London 
and  the  British  Museum,  with  possibly  half  the 
year  spent  in  Devonshire.  He  yearned  to  get 
away  from  the  little  polished  French  home  he 
had  made  for  himself  and  take  Therese  back  to 
England  with  him.  But  this  was  impossible, 
for  her  mother  still  lived  with  them  and  naturally 
would  not  consent  to  expatriate  herself  at  her 
age  from  her  beloved  France.  It  had  been 
truly  no  little  sacrifice  for  her,  a  very  gentle  and 
delicate  woman  even  then  suffering  from  car- 
diac trouble,  to  leave  Paris  and  its  neighbour- 
hood and  stay  with  her  child  nigh  upon  the 
frontier  of  Spain,  almost  beyond  the  borders  of 
French  civilisation. 

I  stayed  barely  a  week  in  St.  Pee  d'Ascain, 
but  during  that  time  we  talked  much  both  of  his 
work  and  of  mine.  Once  more  his  romance  of 
the  sixth  century  was  in  his  mind  and  on  his 
desk,  though  he  worked  more,  perhaps,  at  nee- 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         263 

essary  pot-boilers  than  at  this  long  pondered 
task.     Although  he  did  not  write  so  much  as  of 
old  I  found  it  almost  impossible  to  get  him  to  go 
out  with  me,  save  now  and  again  for  half  an 
hour  in  the  warmest  and  quietest  part  of  the  day. 
He  had  developed  a  great  fear  of  death,  and  life 
seemed  to  him  extraordinarily  fragile.     Such  a 
feeling  is  ever  the  greatest  warning  to  those  who 
know,  and  yet  I  think  if  he  had  been  rather  more 
courageous  and  had  faced  the  weather  a  little 
more,  it  might  have  been  better  for  him.     Dur- 
ing these  few  days  I  became  very  friendly  with 
Madame  Espinel  and  her  daughter,  but  more 
especially  with   the   latter,   because   she   spoke 
English,  and  my  French  has  never  been  very 
fluent.     It  requires  at  least  a  month's  painful 
practice  for  me  to  become  more  or  less  intelli- 
gible to  those  who  speak  it  by  nature.     As  I 
went  away  he  gave  me  a  copy  of  his  new  book 
"The  Meditations  of  Mark  Sumner."     It  is  one 
of  those  odd  things  which  occur  so  frequently  in 
literary  life  that  I  myself  had  in  a  way  given  to 
him  the  notion  of  this  book.     It  was  not  that  I 
suggested  that  he  should  write  it,  indeed  I  had 
developed  the  idea  of  such  a  book  to  him  upon 
my  own  account,  for  I  proposed  at  that  time 
to  write  a  short  life  of  an  imaginary  man  of  let- 
ters to  whom  I  meant  to  attribute  what  I  after- 
wards published  in  'Apteryx."     Perhaps  this 


264  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

seed  had  lain  dormant  in  Maitland's  mind  for 
years,  and  when  he  at  last  wrote  the  book  he  had 
wholly  forgotten  that  it  was  I  who  first  sug- 
gested the  idea.  Certainly  no  two  books  could 
have  been  more  different,  although  my  own  plan 
was  originally  much  more  like  his.  In  the  same 
way  I  now  believe  that  my  story  ''The  Purifica- 
tion" owed  its  inception  without  my  being  aware 
of  it  to  the  suppressed  passage  in  "Outside  the 
Pale"  of  which  I  spoke  some  time  ago.  This 
passage  I  never  read;  but,  when  Maitland  told 
me  of  it,  it  struck  me  greatly  and  remained  in 
my  mind.  These  influences  are  one  of  the  great 
uses  of  literary  companionship  among  men  of 
letters.  As  Henry  Maitland  used  to  say: 
"We  come  together  and  strike  out  sparks." 

As  I  went  north  by  train  from  St.  Pee  dAscain 
to  Bordeaux,  passing  ancient  Dax  and  all  the 
sombre  silences  of  the  wounded  serried  rows  of 
pines  which  have  made  an  infertile  soil  yield 
something  to  commerce,  Maitland's  spirit,  his 
wounded  and  often  sickly  spirit,  was  with  me. 
I  say  "sickly"  with  a  certain  reluctance,  and 
yet  that  is  what  I  felt,  for  I  know  I  read  "The 
Meditations"  with  great  revolt  in  spite  of  its 
obvious  beauty  and  literary  sincerity.  Life,  as 
I  know  well,  is  hard  and  bitter  enough  to  break 
any  man's  spirit,  and  I  knew  that  Maitland  had 
been   through   a   fire   that  not  many  men   had 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         265 

known,  yet  as  I  read  I  thought,  and  still  think, 
that  in  this  book  he  showed  an  undue  failure  of 
courage.  If  he  had  been  through  so  many- 
disasters  yet  there  was  still  much  left  for  him, 
or  should  have  been.  He  had  not  suffered  the 
greatest  disaster  of  all,  for  since  the  death  of  his 
father  in  his  early  youth  he  had  lost  none  that 
he  loved.  The  calculated  dispirited  air  of  the 
book  afflicted  me,  and  yet,  naturally  enough,  I 
found  it  wonderfully  interesting;  for  here  was 
so  much  of  my  lifelong  friend,  even  though  now 
and  again  there  are  little  lapses  in  sincerity  when 
he  put  another  face  on  things,  and  pretended, 
even  to  himself,  that  he  had  felt  in  one  way  and 
not  in  another.  There  is  in  it  only  a  brief  men- 
tion of  myself,  w^hen  he  refers  to  the  one  solitary 
friend  he  possessed  in  London  through  so  many 
years  which  were  only  not  barren  to  him  in  the 
acquisition  of  knowledge. 

But  even  as  I  read  in  the  falling  night  I  came 
to  the  passage  in  which  he  speaks  of  the  Anabasis. 
It  is  curious  to  think  of,  but  I  doubt  if  he  had 
ever  heard  that  modern  scholarship  refuses  to 
believe  it  was  Xenophon  who  wrote  this  book. 
Most  assuredly  had  he  heard  it  he  would  have 
rejected  so  revolutionary  a  notion  with  rage  and 
indignation,  for  to  him  Xenophon  and  the  Ana- 
basis were  one.  In  speaking  of  the  march  of 
the  Greeks  he  quotes  the  passage  where  they  re- 


266  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE  ^ 

warded  and  dismissed  the  guide  who  had  led 
them  through  very  dangerous  country.  The 
text  says :  ^'when  evening  came  he  took  leave  of 
us,  and  went  his  way  by  night."  On  reaching 
Bordeaux  I  surprised  and  troubled  the  telegraph 
clerk  at  the  railway  station  by  telegraphing  to 
Henry  Maitland  those  words  in  the  original 
Greek,  though  naturally  I  had  to  write  them  in 
common  script.  Often-times  I  had  been  his 
guide  but  had  never  led  him  in  safety. 

When  I  reached  England  again  I  wrote  him 
a  very  long  letter  about  "The  Meditations,"  and 
in  answer  received  one  which  I  may  here  quote: 
"My  dear  old  boy,  it  is  right  and  good  that  the 
first  word  about  'Mark  Sumner'  should  come 
from  you.  I  am  delighted  that  you  find  it  read- 
able. For  a  good  ten  years  I  had  this  book  in 
mind  vaguely,  and  for  two  years  have  been  get- 
ting it  into  shape.  You  will  find  that  there  is 
not  very  much  reminiscence;  more  philosophis- 
ing. Why,  of  course,  the  solitary  friend  is  you. 
Good  old  Schmidt  is  mentioned  later.  But  the 
thing  is  a  curious  blend,  of  course,  of  truth  and 
fiction.  Why,  it's  just  because  the  world  is  in- 
explicable' that  I  feel  my  interest  in  it  and  its 
future  grows  less  and  less.  I  am  a  little  op- 
pressed by  'the  burden  of  the  mystery';  not  sel- 
dom I  think  with  deep  content  of  the  time  when 
speculation  will  be  at  an  end.     But  my  delight 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         267 

in  the  beauty  of  the  visible  world,  and  my  enjoy- 
ment of  the  great  things  of  literature,  grow 
stronger.  My  one  desire  now  is  to  utter  this 
passion — yet  the  result  of  one's  attempt  is  rather 
a  poor  culmination  for  Life." 

During  this  year,  and  indeed  during  the 
greater  part  of  1902,  I  was  myself  very  ill  and 
much  troubled,  though  I  worked  exceedingly 
hard  upon  my  longest  book,  ^'Rachel."  In  con- 
sequence of  all  I  went  through  during  the  year 
I  wrote  to  him  very  seldom  until  the  beginning 
of  the  following  spring  I  was  able  to  send  him 
the  book.  For  a  long  time  after  discovering  the 
almost  impossibility  of  making  more  than  a  mere 
living  out  of  fiction,  I  had  in  a  sense  given  up 
writing  for  the  public,  as  every  man  is  more  or 
less  bound  to  do  at  last  if  he  be  not  gratified  with 
commercial  success.  Indeed  for  many  years  I 
wrote  for  some  three  people:  for  my  wife;  for 
Rawson,  the  naturalist,  my  almost  lifelong 
friend;  and  for  Maitland,  the  only  man  I  had 
known  longer  than  Rawson.  Provided  they  ap- 
proved, and  were  a  little  enthusiastic,  I  thought 
all  was  well,  even  though  I  could  earn  no  more 
than  a  mere  living.  And  yet  I  was  conscious 
through  all  these  working  years  that  I  had  never 
actually  conquered  Maitland's  utmost  approval. 
For  I  knew  what  his  enthusiasm  was  when  he  was 
really  roused;  how  obvious,  how  sincere,  and 


268  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

how  tremendous.  When  I  reflect  that  I  did  at 
last  conquer  it  just  before  he  died  I  have  a  cer- 
tain melancholy  pleasure  in  thinking  of  that 
book  of  mine,  which  indeed  in  many  ways  means 
very  much  to  me,  much  more  than  I  can  put 
down,  or  would  put  down  for  any  one  now  liv- 
ing. Were  this  book  which  I  am  now  doing  a 
life  of  myself  rather  than  a  sketch  of  him,  I 
should  certainly  put  in  the  letter,  knowing  that 
I  should  be  forgiven  for  inserting  it  because  it 
was  a  letter  of  Maitland's.  It  was,  indeed,  a 
highly  characteristic  epistle,  for  when  he  praised 
he  praised  indeed,  and  his  words  carried  convic- 
tion to  me,  ever  somewhat  sceptical  of  most  men's 
approval.  He  did  even  more  than  write  to  me, 
for  I  learnt  that  he  spoke  about  this  book  to  other 
friends  of  his,  especially,  as  I  know,  to  Edmund 
Roden  ;  and  also  to  George  Meredith,  who  talked 
to  me  about  it  with  obvious  satisfaction  when  I 
next  met  him.  Nothing  pleased  Maitland  bet- 
ter than  that  any  one  he  loved  should  do  good 
work.  If  ever  a  man  lived  who  was  free  from 
the  prevalent  vices  of  artistic  and  literary  jeal- 
ousy, it  was  Maitland. 

But  now  his  time  was  drawing  to  an  end.  He 
and  Therese  and  Madame  Espinel  left  St.  Pee 
d'Ascain  in  June  1903  and  went  thirty  miles 
further  into  the  Pyrenees.  He  wrote  to  me  a 
few  days  after  reaching  the  little  mountain  town 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         269 

of  St.  Christophe.  The  change  apparently  did 
him  good.  He  declared  that  he  had  now  no 
more  sciatica,  of  which  disease,  by  the  way,  I  had 
not  previously  heard,  and  he  admitted  that  his 
general  health  was  improving.  St.  Christophe 
is  very  picturesquely  situated,  and  Maitland 
loved  it  not  the  less  for  its  associations  in  ancient 
legend,  since  it  is  not  very  far  from  the  Port  or 
Col  de  Roncesvalles,  where  the  legendary  Ro- 
land was  slain  fighting  in  the  rearguard  to  pro- 
tect Charlemagne's  army.  He  and  Therese  went 
once  further  down  the  valley  and  stayed  a  night 
at  Roncesvalles.  If  any  man's  live  imagination 
heard  the  horn  of  Roland  blow  I  think  it  should 
be  Maitland.  And  yet  though  he  took  a  great 
pleasure  in  this  country  of  his,  it  was  not  Eng- 
land, nor  had  he  all  things  at  his  command  which 
he  desired.  I  find  that  he  now  greatly  missed 
the  British  Museum,  which  readers  of  ^'The 
Meditations"  will  know  he  much  frequented  in 
those  old  days.  For  he  was  once  more  hard  at 
work  upon  "Basil,"  and  wrote  to  me  that  he  was 
greatly  in  want  of  exact  knowledge  as  to  the  pro- 
cedure in  the  execution  of  wills  under  the  later 
Roman  Empire.  This  was  a  request  for  infor- 
mation, and  such  requests  I  not  infrequently  re- 
ceived, always  doing  my  best  to  tell  him  what  I 
could  discover,  or  to  give  him  the  names  of  au- 
thorities not  known  to  himself.     He  frequently 


270  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE  |l 

referred  to  me  about  points  of  difficulty,  even 
when  he  was  in  England  but  away  from  London. 
At  that  time,  naturally  enough,  I  knew  nothing 
whatever  about  wills  under  the  Roman  Empire, 
but  in  less  than  a  week  after  he  had  written  to 
me  I  think  it  highly  probable  that  I  knew  more 
than  any  lawyer  in  London  who  was  not  actually 
lecturing  on  the  subject  to  some  pupils.  I  sent 
him  a  long  screed  on  the  matter.  Before  this 
reached  him  I  got  another  letter  giving  me  more 
details  of  what  he  required,  and  since  this  is  cer- 
tainly of  some  interest  as  showing  his  literary 
methods  and  conscientiousness  I  think  it  may  be 
quoted.  He  says:  ^And  now,  hearty  thanks 
for  troubling  about  the  legal  question.  The 
time  with  which  I  am  concerned  is  about  A.D.  540. 
I  know,  of  course,  that  degeneration  and  the 
Gothic  War  made  semi-chaos  of  Roman  civilisa- 
tion; but  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  Roman  law  still 
existed.  The  Goths  never  interfered  with  it,  and 
portions  even  have  been  handed  down.  Now 
the  testator  is  a  senator.  He  has  one  child  only, 
a  daughter,  and  to  her  leaves  most  of  his  estate. 
There  are  legacies  to  two  nephews,  and  to  a  sis- 
ter. A  very  simple  will,  you  see — no  difficulty 
about  it.  But  he  dying,  all  the  legatees  being 
with  him  at  the  time,  how,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
were  things  settled?  Was  an  executor  ap- 
pointed?    Might    an    executor    be    a    legatee? 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         271 

Probate,  I  think,  as  you  say,  there  was  none,  but 
who  inherited?  Still  fantastic  things  were  done 
in  those  times,  but  what  would  the  law  have 
dictated?  Funny,  too,  that  this  is  the  only  real 
difficulty  which  bothers  me  in  the  course  of  my 
story.  As  regards  all  else  that  enters  into  the 
book  I  believe  I  know  as  much  as  one  can  with- 
out being  a  Mommsen.  The  senator  owns  prop- 
erty in  Rome  and  elsewhere.  I  rather  suppose 
it  was  a  case  of  taking  possession  if  you  could, 
and  holding  if  no  one  interfered  with  you. 
Wills  of  this  date  were  frequently  set  aside  on  the 
mere  assertion  of  a  powerful  senator  that  the 
testator  had  verbally  expressed  a  wish  to  benefit 
him.  .  .  .  It  is  a  glorious  age  for  the  romancer." 
As  a  full  answer  to  this  letter  I  borrowed  and  sent 
to  him  Saunders'  ''Justinian,"  and  received  typ- 
ically exaggerated  thanks. 


I 


CHAPTER  XII 

NOW  again  he  and  I  were  but  correspond- 
ents, and  I  do  not  think  that  in  those 
days  when  I  had  so  much  to  do,  and  had 
also  very  bad  health,  I  was  a  very  good  cor- 
respondent. Maitland,  although  he  sometimes 
apologised  humorously,  or  even  nervously,  for 
writing  at  great  length,  was  an  admirable  letter 
writer.  He  practised  a  lost  art.  Sometimes  he 
put  into  his  letters  very  valuable  sketches  of  peo- 
ple. He  did  so  both  to  me  and  to  Rivers,  and  to 
others,  and  frequently  made  sharply  etched  por- 
traits of  people  whom  he  knew  at  St  Pee.  He 
had  a  curious  habit  of  nicknaming  everybody. 
These  nicknames  were  perhaps  not  the  highest 
form  of  art,  nor  were  they  even  always  humorous, 
still  it  was  a  practice  of  his.  He  had  a  peculiarly 
verbal  humor  in  these  matters.  Never  by  any 
chance,  unless  he  was  exceedingly  serious,  did  he 
call  any  man  by  his  actual  name.  Rawson,  my 
most  particular  friend,  whom  he  knew  well,  and 
whose  books  he  admired  very  much  for  their 
style,  was  always  known  as  ''The  Rawsonian," 
and   I   myself  was   referred  to  by  a  similarly 

272 


HENRY  MAITLAND  273 

formed  name.  These  are  matters  of  no  particu- 
lar importance,  but  still  they  show  the  man  in  his 
familiar  moods  and  therefore  have  a  kind  of 
value — as  if  one  were  to  show  a  score  of  photo- 
graphs or  sketches  that  were  serious  and  then 
insert  one  where  the  wise  man  plays  the  child,  or 
even  the  fool.  There  was  not  a  person  of  any 
importance  in  St.  Pee  d'Ascain,  although  nobody 
knew  it,  who  did  not  rejoice  in  some  absurd  nick- 
name. 

However  he  went  further  than  mere  nick- 
names, and  there  is  in  one  letter  of  his  to  Rivers 
a  very  admirable  sketch  of  a  certain  personage: 
^^one  of  the  most  cantankerous  men  I  ever  came 
across;  fierce  against  the  modern  tendencies  of 
science,  especially  in  England;  an  anti-Darwinite 
&c.  He  rages  against  Huxley,  accusing  him  of 
having  used  his  position  for  personal  vanity  and 
gain,  and  of  ruining  the  scientific  and  industrial 
prospects  of  England;  charges  of  the  paltriest 
dishonesty  against  H.  and  other  such  men  abound 
in  his  conversation.  X.,  it  seems,  was  one  of  the 
original  students  of  the  Jermyn  Street  School  of 
Mines,  and  his  root  grievance  is  the  transforma- 
tion of  that  establishment — brought  about,  he  de- 
clares, for  the  personal  profit  of  Huxley  and  of 
— the  clerks  of  the  War  Office !  You,  he  regards 
as  a  most  valuable  demonstration  of  the  evils  re- 
sulting from  the  last  half-century  of  'progress,' 


274  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE  \ 

i 

protesting  loudly  that  every  one  of  your  books  is 
a  bitter  satire  on  Huxley,  his  congeners,  and  his 
disciples.  The  man  tells  me  that  no  scientific 
papers  in  England  will  print  his  writing,  merely  j 
from  personal  enmity.  He  has  also  quarrelled 
with  the  scientific  societies  of  France,  and  now, 
being  a  polyglot,  he  writes  for  Spain  and  Ger- 
many— the  only  two  countries  in  Europe  where 
scientific  impartiality  is  to  be  found." 

In  another  letter  of  his  he  says :  "By  the  bye, 
an  English  paper  states  that  Henley  died  worth 
something  more  than  eight  hundred  pounds." 
One  might  imagine  that  he  would  then  proceed 
to  condole  with  him  on  having  had  so  little  to 
leave,  but  that  was  not  our  Maitland.  He  went  * 
on:  "Amazing!  How  on  earth  did  he  amass  | 
that  wealth?  I  am  rejoiced  to  know  that  his  lat-  j 
ter  years  have  been  passed  without  struggle  for  i 
bread." 

The  long  letter  about  the  Roman  Empire  and  j 
Roman  law  from  which  I  quoted  in  the  last  j 
chapter,  was  dated  August  6,  1903,  and  I  did  not  | 
hear  again  from  Maitland  until  November  i.  1  \ 
had  written  to  him  proposing  to  pay  another  visit  I 
to  the  south-west  of  France  in  order  to  see  him  ] 
in  his  Pyrenean  home,  but  he  replied  very  gloom-  \ 
ily,  saying  that  he  was  in  evil  case,  that  Therese  ■ 
had  laryngitis,  and  that  everything  was  made  | 
worse  by  incredibly  bad  weather.     The  work-     ^ 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         275 

house — still  the  workhouse — was  staring  him  in 
the  face.  He  had  to  labour  a  certain  number  of 
hours  each  day  in  direly  unfavourable  conditions. 
If  he  did  not  finish  his  book  at  the  end  of  the 
year  sheer  pauperdom  would  come  upon  him. 
In  these  circumstances  I  was  to  see  that  he 
dreaded  a  visit  from  any  friend,  indeed  he  was 
afraid  that  they  would  not  be  able  to  stay  in  St. 
Christophe  on  account  of  its  excessive  dampness. 
According  to  this  pathetically  exaggerated  ac- 
count they  lived  in  a  thick  mist  day  and  night. 
How  on  earth  it  came  to  be  thought  that  such  a 
dreadful  country  was  good  for  consumptive  peo- 
ple he  could  not  imagine;  though  he  owned, 
somewhat  grudgingly,  that  he  himself  had  got  a 
good  deal  of  strength  there.  He  told  me  that 
as  soon  as  the  eternal  rain  ceased  they  were  going 
down  to  Bayonne  to  see  a  doctor,  and  if  he  did 
no  good  Therese  would  go  to  the  south  of  France. 
Finally,  he  was  hanged  if  he  knew  how  it  would 
be  managed.  He  ended  up  with:  "In  short  I 
have  not  often  in  my  life  been  nearer  to  an  ap- 
palling crisis."  At  the  end  of  this  dismal  letter, 
which  did  not  afifect  me  so  much  as  might  be 
thought,  he  spoke  to  me  of  my  book,  "Rachel," 
and  said:  "I  have  been  turning  the  pages  with 
great  pleasure  to  keep  my  thoughts  from  the 
workhouse." 

As  I  have  hinted,  those  will  have  gathered 


276  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

very  little  of  Maitland  who  imagine  that  I  took  j] 
this    ail    pied   de    lettre.     Maitland    had   cried  fe 
"Wolf!"  so  often,  that  I  had  almost  ceased  to  'i^ 
believe   that   there  were   wolves,    even   in   the  I 
Pyrenees.     All  things  had  gradually  become  ap- 
palling crises  and  dreadful  disasters.     A  mere 
disturbance  and  an  actual  catastrophe  were  alike 
dire  and  irremediable  calamities.     And  yet,  alas, 
there  was  more  truth  underlying  his  words  than  i 
even  he  knew.     If  a  man  lives  for  ever  in  shadow  | 
the  hour  comes  at  last  when  there  is  no  more  | 
light;  and  even  for  those  who  look  forward,  one  ] 
would  think  with  a  certain  relief,  to  the  work-  | 
house,  there  comes  a  day  that  they  shall  work  no  | 
more.     I  smiled  when  I  read  this  letter,  but,  of 
course,  telegraphed  to  him  deferring  my  visit 
until  the  rain  had  ceased,  or  laryngitis  had  de- 
parted from  his  house,  or  until  his  spirits  recov- 
ered their  tone  on  the  completion  of  his  great 
romance.     One  could  do  no  other,  much  as  I 
desired  to  see  him  and  have  one  of  our  prodigious 
and  preposterously  long  talks  in  his  new  home. 
I  do  not  think  that  I  wrote  to  him  after  this  la- 
mentable reply  of  his,  but  on  November  i6  I  re- 
ceived my  last  communication  from  him.     It 
was  three  lines  on  a  post-card,  still  dated  from 
St.  Christophe.     He  referred  in  it  once  more  to 
my   book,    and    said:     "Delighted    to    see    the 
advertisement  in to-day,  especially  after 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         277 

their  very  base  notice  last  week.     Hurrah !     Ill- 
ness  and   struggle   still   going  on   here."     The 
struggle  I  believed  in,  but,  as  ever  w^ith  one's 
friends,  one  doubted  if  the  illness  were  serious. 
And  yet  the  catastrophe  was  coming. 
I     At  this  time  I  was  myself  seriously  ill.     A 
'  chronic  disease  which  had  not  been  diagnosed 
resulted  in  a  more  or  less  serious  infection  of 
my  own  lungs,  and,  if  I  recollect  truly,  I  had 
been  in  bed  for  nearly  a  fortnight.     During  the 
early  days  of  my  convalescence  I  went  down  to 
my  club,  and  there  one  afternoon  got  this  tele- 
gram from  Rivers:     ''Have  received  following 
telegram  from   Maitland,  'Henry  dying.     En- 
treat you  to  come.     In  greatest  haste.'     I  cannot 
go,  can  you?"     This  message  to  me  was  dated 
Folkestone,  where  Rivers  was  then  living.     Now 
at  this  time  I  was  feeling  very  ill  and  utterly  un- 
fit to  travel.     I  hardly  knew  what  to  do,  but 
thought  it  best  to  go  home  and  consult  with  my 
wife  before  I  replied  to  Rivers.     Anxious  as  she 
was  to  do  everything  possible  for  Maitland,  she 
implored  me  not  to  venture  on  so  long  a  jour- 
ney,   especially   as   it  was   mid-winter,   just   at 
Christmas-time.     If  I  had  not  felt  really  ill  she 
would  not  have  placed  any  obstacles  in  my  path, 
of  that  I  am  sure.     She  would,  indeed,  have 
urged  me  to  go.     After  a  little  reflection  I  there- 
fore replied  to  Rivers  that  I  was  myself  very  ill, 


278  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE  p 

but  added  that  if  he  could  not  possibly  go  I  jl 
would.  At  the  same  time  I  telegraphed  to  Mait-  |l 
land,  or  rather  to  Therese,  saying  that  I  was  ill,  t 
but  that  I  would  come  if  she  found  it  absolutely  ■ 
necessary.  I  do  not  think  I  received  any  an-  i 
swer  to  this  message,  a  fact  one  easily  understands  'I 
when  one  learns  how  desperate  things  really  ;^ 
were;  but  on  December  26  I  got  another  tele-  ij 
gram  from  Rivers.  I  found  that  he  had  gone  j- 
to  St.  Christophe  in  spite  of  not  being  well.  He  ') 
wired  to  me:  ^'No  nurse.  Nursing  help  may  -{ 
save  Maitland.  Come  if  possibly  can.  Am  ^ 
here  but  ill."  Such  an  appeal  could  not  be  re-  j 
sisted.  I  went  straight  home,  and  showing  this  : 
telegram  to  my  wife  she  agreed  with  me  that  I  1 
ought  to  go.  If  Rivers  was  ill  at  St.  Christophe  \_ 
it  now  seemed  my  absolute  duty  to  go,  whatever  1 
my  own  state  of  health.  : 

I  left  London  that  night  by  the  late  train, 
crossing  to  Paris  by  way  of  Newhaven  and 
Dieppe  in  order  that  I  might  get  at  least  three 
hours  of  rest  in  a  recumbent  position  in  the 
steamer,  as  I  did  not  at  that  time  feel  justified  in 
going  all  the  way  first  class  and  taking  a  sleeper. 
I  did  manage  to  obtain  some  rest  during  the  sea- 
passage,  but  on  reaching  Paris  early  in  the  morn- 
ing I  felt  exceedingly  unwell,  and  at  the  Gare 
St.-Lazare  found  at  that  hour  no  means  of  ob- 
taining even  a  cup  of  coffee.     I  drove  over  to  the 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         279 

Quai  d'Orsay,  and  spent  an  hour  or  two  in  the 
coffee-room  waiting  for  the  departure  of  the  ex- 
press to  Bordeaux.  Ill  as  I  was,  and  full  of  anx- 
iety about  Maitland,  and  now  about  Rivers,  that 
journey  was  one  long  nightmare  to  me.  1  had 
not  been  able  to  take  the  Sud  Express,  and  when 
at  last,  late  in  the  evening,  I  reached  Bayonne,  I 
found  that  the  last  train  to  St.  Christophe  in  its 
high  Pyrenean  valley  had  already  gone  hours  be- 
fore my  arrival.  While  I  was  on  my  journey  I 
had  again  telegraphed  from  Morcenx  to  Rivers 
or  to  Therese  asking  them  to  telegraph  to  me  at 
the  Hotel  du  Commerce,  Bayonne,  in  case  I  was 
unable  to  get  on  that  night,  as  I  had  indeed 
feared,  although  I  was  unable  to  get  accurate 
information.  On  reaching  this  hotel  I  found 
waiting  for  me  a  telegram,  which  I  have  now 
lost,  that  was  somehow  exceedingly  obscure  but 
yet  portended  disaster.  That  I  expected  the 
worst  I  know,  for  I  telegraphed  to  my  wife  the 
news  in  code  that  Maitland  was  dying  and  that 
the  doctor  gave  no  hope. 

If  I  had  been  a  rich  man,  or  even  moderately 
furnished  with  money  on  that  journey,  I  should 
have  taken  a  motor-car  if  it  could  have  been 
obtained,  and  have  gone  on  at  once  without  wait- 
ing for  the  morning.  But  now  I  was  obliged  to 
spend  the  night  in  that  little  old-fashioned  hotel 
in  the  old  English  city  of  Bayonne^  the  city  whose 


280  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

fortress  bears  the  proud  emblem  ''Nunquam 
poUuta."  I  wondered  much  if  I  should  yet  see 
my  old  friend  alive.  It  was  possible,  and  I 
hoped.  At  any  rate,  he  must  know  that  I  was 
coming  and  was  near  at  hand  if  only  he  were  yet 
conscious.  How  much  I  was  needed  I  did  not 
know  till  afterwards,  for  even  as  I  was  going 
south  Rivers  was  once  more  returning  to  Paris 
on  his  homeward  journey.  As  I  learnt  after- 
wards, he  was  far  too  unwell  to  stay.  In  the 
morning  I  took  the  first  train  to  St.  Christophe, 
passing  Cambo,  where  Rostand,  the  poet,  makes 
his  home.  On  reaching  the  town  where  Mait- 
land  lived  I  found  no  one  waiting  for  me  as  I 
had  expected;  for,  naturally  enough,  I  thought 
it  possible  that  unless  Rivers  were  very  ill  he 
would  be  able  to  meet  me.  It  was  a  cold  and 
gloomy  morning  when  I  left  the  station.  Tak- 
ing my  bag  in  my  hand,  I  hired  a  small  boy  to 
show  me  the  house  in  which  Maitland  lived  on 
the  outskirts  of  the  little  Pyrenean  town.  This 
house,  it  seems,  was  let  in  flats,  and  the  Mait- 
lands  occupied  the  first  floor.  On  entering  the 
hall  I  found  a  servant  washing  down  the  stone 
flooring.  I  said  to  her,  "Comment  Monsieur  se 
porte-t-il?"  and  she  replied,  "Monsieur  est 
mort."  I  then  asked  her  where  I  should  find  the 
other  Englishman.  She  answered  that  he  had 
gone  back  to  England  the  day  before,  and  then 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         281 

took  me  upstairs  and  went  in  to  tell  Therese  that 
I  had  come. 

I  found  her  with  her  mother.  She  was  the 
only  woman  who  had  given  him  any  happiness. 
Now  she  was  completely  broken  down  by  the 
anxiety  and  distress  which  had  come  upon  her  so 
suddenly.  For  indeed  it  seems  that  it  had  been 
sudden.  Only  four  or  five  days  ago  Maitland 
had  been  working  hard  upon  ''Basil,"  the  book 
from  which  he  hoped  so  much,  and  in  which  he 
believed  so  fervently.  Then  it  seems  that  he 
developed  what  he  called  a  cold,  some  slight  af- 
fection of  the  lungs  which  raised  his  temperature 
a  little.  Strangely  enough  he  did  not  take  the 
care  of  himself  that  he  should  have  taken,  or  that 
care  which  I  should  have  expected  him  to  use, 
considering  his  curiously  expressed  nervousness 
about  himself.  By  some  odd  fatality  he  became 
suddenly  courageous  at  the  wrong  time,  and  went 
out  for  a  walk  in  desperately  bad  weather.  On 
the  following  day  he  was  obviously  very  seri- 
ously ill,  and  sent  for  the  doctor,  who  suspended 
judgment  but  feared  that  he  had  pneumonia. 
On  the  day  succeeding  this  yet  another  doctor 
was  called  into  consultation,  and  the  diagnosis 
of  pneumonia  was  confirmed  without  any  doubt. 
But  that  was  not,  perhaps,  what  actually  killed 
him.  There  was  a  very  serious  complication, 
according  to   Maitland's   first  physician,   with 


282  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

whom  I  afterwards  had  a  long  conversation, 
partly  through  the  intermediary  of  the  nurse, 
an  Englishwoman  from  Bayonne,  who  talked 
French  more  fluently  than  myself.  He  con- 
sidered that  Maitland  also  had  myocarditis. 
I  certainly  did  not  think,  and  do  not  think,  that 
he  was  right  in  this.  Myocarditis  is  rarely  ac- 
companied with  much  or  severe  pain,  while  the 
anguish  of  violent  pericarditis  is  often  very 
great,  and  Maitland  had  suffered  most  atro- 
ciously. He  was  not  now  a  strong  man,  not  one 
with  big  reserves  and  powers  of  passive  endur- 
ance, and  in  his  agony  he  cried  aloud  for  death. 

In  these  agonies  there  were  periods  of  com- 
parative ease  when  he  rested  and  was  quiet,  and 
even  spoke  a  little.  In  one  of  these  intermis- 
sions Therese  came  to  him  and  told  him  that  I 
was  now  actually  on  my  w^y.  There  is  no  rea- 
son, I  think,  why  I  should  not  write  what  he 

said.     It  was  simply,  "Good  old  H ."     By 

this  time  Rivers  had  gone;  but  before  his  de- 
parture he  had,  I  understand,  procured  the 
nurse.  The  last  struggle  came  early  that  morn- 
ing, December  28,  while  I  was  at  the  Bayonne 
hotel  preparing  to  catch  the  early  train.  He 
died  quietly  just  before  dawn,  I  think  at  six 
o'clock. 

I  was  taken  in  to  see  Therese,  who  was  still  in 
bed,   and  found  her  mother  with  her.     They 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAXD         283 

were  two  desolate  and  lonely  women,  and  I  had 
some  fears  that  Therese  would  hardly  recover 
from  the  blow,  so  deeply  did  his  death  affect 
her.  She  was  always  a  delicate  woman,  and 
came  from  a  delicate,  neurotic  stock,  as  one 
could  see  so  plainly  in  the  elder  woman.  I  did 
my  best  to  say  what  one  could  say,  though  all 
that  can  possibly  be  said  in  such  cases  is  nothing 
after  all.  There  is  no  physic  for  grief  but  the 
slow,  inevitable  years.  I  stayed  not  long,  but 
went  into  the  other  chamber  and  saw  my  dead 
friend.  The  bed  on  which  he  lay  stood  in  a 
little  alcove  at  the  end  of  the  room  farthest  from 
the  window.  I  remember  that  the  nurse,  who 
behaved  most  considerately  to  me,  stood  by  the 
window  while  I  said  farewell  to  him.  He 
looked  strangely  and  peculiarly  intellectual,  as 
so  often  happens  after  death.  The  final  relaxa- 
tion of  the  muscles  about  his  chin  and  mouth 
accentuated  most  markedly  the  strong  form  of 
the  actual  skull.  Curiously  enough,  as  he  had 
grown  a  little  beard  in  his  last  illness,  it  seemed 
to  me  that  he  resembled  very  strongly  another 
English  writer  not  yet  dead,  one  whom  nature 
had,  indeed,  marked  out  as  a  story-teller,  but 
who  lacked  all  those  qualities  which  made  Mait- 
land  what  he  was.  As  I  stood  by  this  dead-bed 
knowing,  as  I  did  know,  that  he  had  died  at 
last  in  the  strange  anguish  which  I  was  aware 


284  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

he  had  feared,  it  seemed  to  me  that  here  was  a 
man  who  had  been  born  to  inherit  grief.  He 
had  never  known  pure  peace  or  utter  joy  as  even 
some  of  the  very  humblest  know  it.  I  looked 
back  across  the  toilsome  path  by  which  he  had 
come  hither  to  the  end,  and  it  seemed  to  me 
that  from  the  very  first  he  had  been  doomed. 
In  other  times  or  some  other  age  he  might  have 
had  a  better  fate,  but  he  was  born  out  of  his 
time  and  died  in  exile  doubly.  I  put  my  hand 
upon  his  forehead  and  said  farewell  to  him  and 
left  the  room,  for  I  knew  that  there  was  much 
to  do  and  that  in  some  way  I  had  to  do  it. 

Therese  was  most  anxious  that  he  should  not 
be  buried  in  St.  Christophe,  of  which  she  had 
conceived  a  natural  horror.  There  was  at  this 
time  an  English  clergyman  in  the  village,  the 
chaplain  of  the  English  church  at  St.  Pee,  about 
whom  I  shall  have  something  to  say  later. 
With  him  I  concerted  what  was  to  be  done,  and 
he  obtained  the  necessary  papers  from  the 
mairie.  And  all  this  time,  across  the  road  from 
the  stone  house  in  which  Henry  Maitland  lay 
dead,  I  heard  the  sound  of  his  coffin  being  made 
in  the  little  carpenter's  shop  which  stood  there. 
When  all  was  done  that  could  be  done,  and 
everything  was  in  order,  I  went  to  the  little  ho- 
tel and  had  my  lunch  all  alone,  and  afterwards 
dined  alone  and  slept  that  night  in  the  same  ho- 


I 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         285 

tel.  The  next  day,  late  in  the  afternoon,  I  went 
down  to  St.  Pee  d'Ascain  in  charge  of  his  body. 
During  this  journey  the  young  doctor  who  had 
attended  Maitland  accompanied  me  part  of  the 
way,  and  for  the  rest  of  it  his  nurse  was  my  com- 
panion. At  St.  Pee  d'Ascain,  where  it  was  then 
quite  dark,  we  were  received  by  the  clergyman, 
who  had  preceded  us,  and  by  a  hearse,  into  which 
we  carried  Maitland's  body.  I  accompanied  it 
to  the  English  chapel,  where  it  remained  all 
night  before  the  altar.  I  slept  at  my  old  hotel, 
where  I  was  known,  as  I  had  stayed  there  at  the 
time  I  last  saw  Maitland  alive. 

In  the  morning  a  service  was  held  for  him  ac- 
cording to  the  rites  of  the  English  Church.  This 
was  the  desire  of  Therese  and  Madame  Espinel, 
who,  if  it  had  been  possible,  I  think  would  have 
desired  to  bury  him  according  to  the  rites  of  the 
Catholic  Church.  Maitland,  of  course,  had  no 
orthodox  belief.  He  refused  to  think  of  these 
things,  for  they  were  disturbing  and  led  no- 
whither.  Attending  this  service  there  were  many 
English  people,  some  who  knew  him,  and  some 
again  who  did  not  know  him  but  went  there  out 
of  respect  for  his  name  and  reputation,  and  per- 
haps because  they  felt  that  they  and  he  were  alike 
in  exile.  We  buried  him  in  the  common  ceme- 
tery of  St.  Pee,  a  place  not  unbeautiful,  nor  un- 
beautifuUy    situated.     And    while    the    service 


286  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

went  on  over  his  grave  I  was  somehow  reminded 
of  the  lovely  cemetery  at  Lisbon  where  another 
English  man  of  letters  lies  in  a  tomb  far  from 
his  own  country.     I  speak  of  Fielding. 

I  left  Therese  and  Madame  Espinel  still  at  St. 
Christophe,  and  did  not  see  them  again  before  I 
started  for  England.  They,  I  knew,  would 
probably  return  to  Paris,  or  perhaps  would  go  to 
relatives  of  theirs  in  Spain.  I  could  help  them 
no  more,  and  by  now  I  discovered  that  my  win- 
ter journey,  or  perhaps  even  my  short  visit  to  the 
death-chamber  of  Henry  Maitland,  had  given 
me  some  kind  of  pulmonary  catarrh  which  in 
my  overwrought  and  nervous  state  seemed  likely, 
perhaps,  to  result  in  something  more  serious. 
Therefore,  having  done  all  that  I  could,  and  hav- 
ing seen  him  put  in  the  earth,  I  returned  home 
hurriedly.  On  reaching  England  I  was  very  ill 
for  many  days,  but  recovered  without  any  serious 
results.  Soon  afterwards  some  one,  I  know  not 
who  it  was,  sent  me  a  paragraph  published  in  a 
religious  paper  which  claimed  Maitland  as  a 
disciple  of  the  Church,  for  it  said  that  he  had 
died  ''in  the  fear  of  God's  holy  name,  and  with 
the  comfort  and  strength  of  the  Catholic  faith." 
When  some  men  die  there  are  for  ever  crows  and 
vultures  about.  Although  I  was  very  loath  to 
say  anything  which  would  raise  an  angry  dis- 
cussion, I  felt  that  this  could  not  be  passed  by 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         287 

and  that  he  would  not  have  wished  it  to  be  passed 
by.  Had  he  not  written  of  a  certain  character 
in  one  of  his  books  ^'that  he  should  be  buried  as  a 
son  of  the  Church,  to  whom  he  had  never  be- 
longed, was  a  matter  of  indignation"?  That 
others  felt  as  I  did  is  proved  by  a  letter  I  got 
from  his  friend  Edmund  Roden,  who  wrote  to 
me:  ^'You  have  seen  the  report  that  the  eccle- 
siastical buzzards  have  got  hold  of  Henry  Mait- 
land  in  articulo  mortis  and  dragged  him  into  the 
fold." 

My  own  views  upon  religion  did  not  matter. 
They  were  stronger  and  more  pronounced,  and, 
it  may  be,  more  atheistical  than  his  own.  Never- 
theless I  knew  what  he  felt  about  these  things, 
and  in  consequence  wrote  the  following  letter  to 
the  editor  of  the  paper  which  had  claimed  him 
for  the  Church :  ^'My  attention  has  been  drawn 
to  a  statement  in  your  columns  that  Henry  Mait- 
land  died  in  communion  with  the  Church  of 
England,  and  I  shall  be  much  obliged  if  you  will 
give  to  this  contradiction  the  same  publicity  you 
granted,  without  investigation,  to  the  calumny. 
I  was  intimate  with  Maitland  for  thirty  years, 
and  had  every  opportunity  of  noting  his  attitude 
towards  all  theological  speculation.  He  not 
only  accepted  none  of  the  dogmas  formulated  in 
the  creeds  and  articles  of  the  Church  of  England, 
but  he  considered  it  impossible  that  any  Church's 


288  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

definition  of  the  undefinable  could  have  any  sig- 
nificance for  any  intelligent  man.  During  the 
whole  of  our  long  intimacy  I  never  knew  him  to 
waver  from  that  point  of  view. 

'What  communication  may  have  reached  you 
from  any  one  who  visited  Maitland  during  his 
illness  I  do  not  know.  But  I  presume  you  do 
not  maintain  that  a  change  in  his  theological 
standpoint  can  reasonably  be  inferred  from  any 
words  which  he  may  have  been  induced  to  speak 
in  a  condition  in  which,  according  to  the  law  of 
every  civilised  country,  he  would  have  been  in- 
competent to  sign  a  codicil  to  his  will. 

''The  attempt  to  draw  such  a  deduction  will 
seem  dishonest  to  every  fair-minded  man;  and 
I  rely  upon  your  courtesy  to  publish  this  vin- 
dication of  the  memory  of  an  honest  and  con- 
sistent thinker  which  you  have,  however  uninten- 
tionally, aspersed.'' 

Of  course  this  letter  was  refused  publication. 
The  editor  answered  it  in  a  note  in  which  he 
maintained  the  position  that  the  paper  had  taken 
up,  stating  that  he  was  thoroughly  satisfied  with 
the  sources  of  his  information.  Naturally 
enough  I  knew  what  those  sources  were,  and  I 
wrote  a  letter  in  anger  to  the  chaplain  of  St.  Pee, 
which,  I  fear,  was  full  of  very  gross  insults. 

Seeing  that  the  paper  refused  my  letter  admis- 
sion to  its  columns,  on  the  advice  of  certain  other 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAXD         280 

people  I  wrote  to  a  London  daily  saying:  'As 
the  intimate  friend  of  Henry  Maitland  for  thirty 
years,  I  beg  to  state  definitely  that  he  had  not  the 
slightest  intellectual  sympathy  with  any  creed 
whatsoever.  From  his  early  youth  he  had  none, 
save  for  a  short  period  when,  for  reasons  other 
than  intellectual,  he  inclined  to  a  vague  and 
nebulous  Positivism.  His  mental  attitude  to- 
wards all  theological  explanations  was  more  than 
critical,  it  was  absolutely  indifferent;  he  could 
hardly  understand  how  any  one  in  the  full  pos- 
session of  his  faculties  could  subscribe  to  any 
formulated  doctrines.  No  more  than  John 
Stuart  Mill  or  Herbert  Spencer  could  he  have 
entered  into  communion  with  any  Church." 

Of  course  I  knew,  as  any  man  must  know  who 
is  acquainted  with  humanity  and  its  frailties,  that 
it  was  possible  for  Maitland,  during  the  last  few 
poisoned  hours  of  his  life,  to  have  gone  back  in 
his  delirium  upon  the  whole  of  his  previous  con- 
victions. He  knew  that  he  was  dying.  When 
he  asked  to  know  the  truth  he  had  been  told  it. 
In  such  circumstances  some  men  break  down. 
There  are  what  people  call  death-bed  repent- 
ances. Therefore  I  did  my  best  to  satisfy  myself 
as  to  whether  anything  whatever  had  occurred 
which  would  give  any  colour  to  these  theologic 
lies.  I  could  not  trouble  Therese  upon  this  par- 
ticular point,  but  it  occurred  to  me  that  the  nurse, 


290  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

who  was  a  very  intelligent  woman,  must  be  in  a 
position  to  know  something  of  the  matter,  and  I 
therefore  wrote  to  her  asking  her  to  tell  me  all 
she  knew.  She  replied  to  me  about  the  middle 
of  January,  telling  me  that  she  had  just  then  had 
a  long  talk  with  Mrs.  Maitland,  and  giving  me 
the  following  facts. 

It  appears  that  on  Monday,  December  21, 
Maitland  was  so  ill  that  a  consultation  was 
thought  necessary,  and  that  both  the  doctors 
agreed  that  it  was  impossible  for  the  patient  to 
live  through  the  night,  though  in  fact  he  did  not 
die  till  nearly  a  week  afterwards.  On  Thursday, 
December  24,  the  chaplain  was  sent  for,  not  for 
any  religious  reasons,  or  because  Maitland  had 
called  for  him,  but  simply  because  Therese 
thought  that  he  might  find  some  pleasure  in  see- 
ing an  English  face.  When  the  clergyman  came 
it  did  indeed  have  this  effect,  for  Maitland's  face 
lit  up  and  he  shook  him  heartily  by  the  hand. 
At  this  moment  the  young  doctor  came  in  and 
told  the  clergyman  privately  that  Maitland  had 
no  chance  whatever,  and  that  it  was  a  wonder 
that  he  was  still  alive.  It  is  quite  certain  that 
there  was  no  religious  conversation  between  the 
clergyman  and  the  patient  at  this  time.  The 
nurse  arrived  at  eleven  o'clock  on  Sunday  morn- 
ing, and  insisted  on  absolute  quietness  in  the 
room.     The  clergyman  simply  peeped  in  at  the 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         291 

door   to   say   good-bye,    for   at  that   time   Mr. 
Rivers  was  in  charge  in  the  bedroom. 

The  chaplain  did  not  see  Maitland  again  until 
the  day  I  myself  came  to  St.  Christophe,  when 
all  was  over.     While  Maitland  was  delirious  it 
appears  that  he  chanted  some  kind  of  Te  Deum 
repeatedly.     To  what  this  was  attributable  no 
man  can  say  with  certainty,  but  it  is  a  curious 
thing  to  reflect  upon  that  "Basil"  was  about  the 
time  of  Gregory,  and  that  Maitland  had  been 
studying  most  minutely  the  history  of  the  early 
Church  in  many  ecclesiastical  works.     Accord- 
ing to  those  who  heard  his  delirious  talk,  it 
seems    that   all   he    did   say   had    reference   to 
"Basil,"  the  book  about  which  he  had  been  so 
anxious,  and  was  never  to  finish.     At  any  rate 
it  is  absolutely  certain  that  Maitland  never  ac- 
cepted  the   offices   of   the   Church   before   his 
death,  even  in  delirium.     Before  I  leave  this 
matter  I  may  mention  that  the  chaplain  com- 
plicated matters  in  no  small  degree  before  he 
retired  from  the  scene,  by  declaring  most  disin- 
genuously that  he  had  not  written  the  notice 
which  appeared  in  print.     Now  this  was  per- 
fectly true.     He  did  not  write  it.     He  had  asked 
a  friend  of  his  to  do  so.     When  he  learnt  the 
truth  this  friend  very  much   regretted  having 
undertaken  the  task.     I  understand  that  though 
the  editor  refused  to  withdraw  this  statement 


292  HENRY  MAITLAND 

the  authorities  of  the  paper  wrote  to  the  chap- 
lain in  no  pleased  spirit  after  they  had  received 
my  somewhat  severely  phrased  communication. 
It  is  a  sad  and  disagreeable  subject,  and  I  am 
glad  to  leave  it. 

I 


i 


CHAPTER  XIII 

FOR  ever  on  looking  backwards  one  is 
filled  with  regrets,  and  one  thing  I  re- 
gret greatly  about  Henry  Maitland  is 
that,  though  I  might  perhaps  have  purchased 
his  little  library,  the  books  he  had  accumulated 
with  so  much  joy  and  such  self-sacrifice,  I  never 
thought  of  this  until  it  was  too  late.  Books 
made  up  so  much  of  his  life,  and  few  of  his  had 
not  been  bought  at  the  cost  of  what  others  would 
consider  pleasure,  or  by  the  sacrifice  of  some 
sensation  which  he  himself  would  have  enjoyed 
at  the  time.  Now  I  possess  none  of  his  books 
but  those  he  gave  me,  save  only  the  little  ^'An- 
thologia  Latina"  which  Therese  herself  sent 
to  me.  This  was  a  volume  in  which  he  took 
peculiar  delight,  perhaps  even  more  delight 
than  he  did  in  the  Greek  anthology,  which  I 
myself  preferred  so  far  as  my  Greek  would  then 
carry  me.  Many  times  I  have  seen  him  take 
down  the  little  Eton  anthology  and  read  aloud. 
Now  I  myself  may  quote : 

Animula  vagula,  blandula, 
Hospes  comesque  corporis. 


294  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

Qute  nunc  abibis  in  loca 
Pallidula,  rigida,  nudula 


I  believe  his  library  was  sold  in  Paris,  for 
now  that  Therese  had  no  settled  home  it  was 
impossible  to  carry  it  about  with  her.  Among 
these  books  were  all  those  beautifully  bound 
volumes  which  he  had  obtained  as  prizes  at 
Moorhampton  College,  and  others  which  he  had 
picked  up  at  various  times  in  the  various  book- 
shops of  London,  so  many  of  which  he  speaks 
of  in  'The  Meditations" — his  old  Gibbon  in 
quarto,  and  some  hundreds  of  others  chosen  with 
joy  because  they  appealed  to  him  in  a  way  only 
a  book-lover  can  understand.  He  had  a  strange 
pleasure  in  buying  old  copies  of  the  classics, 
which  shows  that  he  was  perhaps  after  all  more 
of  a  bookman  than  a  scholar.  He  would  per- 
haps have  rather  possessed  such  a  copy  of 
Lucretius  as  is  on  my  own  shelves,  which  has 
no  notes  but  is  wonderfully  printed,  than  the 
newest  edition  by  the  newest  editor.  He  was 
conscious  that  his  chief  desire  was  literature 
rather  than  scholarship.  Few  indeed  there  are 
who  know  the  classics  as  well  as  he  did,  who 
read  them  for  ever  with  so  much  delight. 

Maitland,  for  an  Englishman,  knew  many 
languages.  His  Greek,  though  not  extraordi- 
narily deep,  was  most  familiar.     He  could  read 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         295 

jV  Aristophanes  lying  on  the  sofa,  thoroughly  en- 
joying it,  and  rarely  rising  to  consult  Liddell 
and  Scott,  a  book  which  he  adored  in  the  most 
odd  fashion,  perhaps  because  it  knew  so  much 
Greek.  There  was  no  Latin  author  whom  he 
could  not  read  fluently.  I  myself  frequently 
took  him  up  a  difficult  passage  in  Juvenal  and 
Persius,  and  rarely,  if  ever,  found  him  at  fault, 
or  slow  to  give  me  help.  French  he  knew  very 
nearly  as  well  as  a  Frenchman,  and  spoke  it  very 
fluently.  His  Italian  was  also  very  good,  and 
he  spoke  that  too  without  hesitation.  Spanish 
he  only  read;  I  do  not  think  he  often  attempted 
to  speak  it.  Nevertheless  he  read  ''Don  Quix- 
ote" in  the  original;  and  his  Italian  can  be 
judged  by  the  fact  that  he  read  Dante's 
"Divina  Commedia"  almost  as  easily  as  he  read 
his  Virgil.  German  too  was  an  open  book  to 
him,  and  he  had  read  most  of  the  great  men  who 
wrote  in  it,  understanding  even  the  obscurities 
of  "Titan."  I  marked  down  the  other  day 
many  of  the  books  in  which  he  chiefly  delighted, 
or  rather,  let  me  say,  many  of  the  authors. 
Homer,  of  course,  stood  at  the  head  of  the  list, 
for  Homer  he  knew  as  well  as  he  knew  Shakes- 
peare. His  adoration  for  Shakespeare  was,  in- 
deed, I  think,  excessive,  but  the  less  said  of  that 
the  better,  for  I  have  no  desire  to  express  fully 
what  I  think  concerning  the  general  English 


296  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

over-estimation  of  that  particular  author.  I  do, 
however,  understand  how  it  was  that  Maitland 
worshipped  him  so,  for  whatever  may  be  thought 
of  Shakespeare's  dramatic  ability,  or  his  char- 
acterisation, or  his  general  psychology,  there 
can  be  no  dispute  about  his  having  been  a  mas- 
ter of  "beautiful  words."  Milton  he  loved 
marvellously,  and  sometimes  he  read  his  sonnets 
to  me.  Much  of  "Lycidas"  he  knew  by  heart, 
and  some  of  "II  Penseroso."  Among  the  Latins, 
Virgil,  Catullus,  and  Tibullus  were  his  favour- 
ites, although  he  took  a  curious  interest  in 
Cicero,  a  thing  in  which  I  was  never  able  to 
follow  him.  I  once  showed  to  Maitland  in  the 
"Tusculan  Disputations"  what  Cicero  seemed 
to  think  a  good  joke.  It  betrayed  such  an  ex- 
traordinary lack  of  humour  that  I  was  satisfied 
to  leave  the  "Disputations"  alone  henceforth. 
The  only  Latin  book  which  I  myself  introduced 
to  Maitland  was  the  "Letters"  of  Pliny.  They 
afterwards  became  great  favourites  with  him 
because  some  of  them  dealt  with  his  beloved 
Naples  and  Vesuvius.  Lucian's  "Dialogues"  he 
admired  very  much,  finding  them,  as  indeed 
they  are,  always  delightful ;  and  it  was  very  in- 
teresting to  him  when  I  showed  him  to  what 
extent  Disraeli  was  indebted  to  Lucian  in  those 
clever  jeux  d'esprit  "Ixion  in  Heaven,"  "Popa- 
nilla,"    and    "The    Infernal    Marriage."     The 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         297 

"Golden  Ass"  of  Apuleius  he  knew  almost  by 
heart.  Petronius  he  read  very  frequently;  it 
contained  some  of  the  actual  life  of  the  old 
world.  He  knew  Diogenes  Laertius  very  well, 
though  he  read  that  author,  as  Montaigne  did, 
rather  for  the  light  he  throws  upon  the  private 
life  of  the  Greeks  than  for  the  philosophy  in  the 
book;  and  he  frequently  dipped  into  Athenaeus 
the  Deipnosophist.  Occasionally,  but  very  oc- 
casionally, he  did  read  some  ancient  metaphysics, 
for  Plato  was  a  favourite  of  his — not,  I  think,  on 
account  of  his  philosophy,  but  because  he  wrote 
so  beautifully.  Aristotle  he  rarely  touched,  al- 
though he  knew  the  "Poetics."  He  had  a  pecul- 
iar admiration  for  the  Stoic  Marcus  Aurelius,  in 
which  I  never  followed  him  because  the  Stoic 
philosophy  is  so  peculiarly  inhuman.  But,  after 
all,  among  the  Greeks  his  chief  joy  was  the  tra- 
gedians, and  there  was  no  single  play  or  frag- 
ment of  i^schylus,  Sophocles,  and  Euripides  that 
he  did  not  know  almost  by  heart.  Among  the 
Frenchmen  his  great  favourites  were  Rabelais 
and  Montaigne  and,  later,  Flaubert,  Maupas- 
sant, Victor  Hugo,  Zola,  Balzac,  and  the  Gon- 
courts.  As  I  have  said  before,  he  had  a  great 
admiration  for  the  Russian  writers  of  eminence, 
and  much  regretted  that  he  did  not  know  Rus- 
sian. He  once  even  attempted  it,  but  put  it 
aside.     I  think  Balzac  was  the  only  writer  of 


298  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

importance  that  he  read  much  of  who  did  not 
possess  a  style;  he  owned  that  he  found  him  on 
that  account  at  times  almost  impossible  to  read. 
Nevertheless  he  did  read  him,  and  learnt  much 
from  him;  but  his  chief  admiration  among  the 
French  on  the  ground  of  their  being  artists  was 
for  Flaubert  and  Maupassant.  Zola's  style  did 
not  appeal  to  him ;  in  fact  in  many  of  his  books  it 
is  little  better  than  Balzac's.  Maitland's  love  of 
beautiful  words  and  the  rhythms  of  prose  was 
as  deep  as  that  of  Meredith;  and  as  I  have  said, 
his  adoration  of  Shakespeare  was  founded  on  the 
fact  that  Shakespeare  still  remains  the  great  en- 
chanter in  the  world  of  phrases.  He  read  Eng- 
lish very  deeply.  There  was  little  among  the 
fields  of  English  prose  that  he  did  not  know 
well ;  but  again  he  loved  best  those  who  had  a 
noble  style  of  their  own,  notably  Sir  Thomas 
Browne.  If  a  man  had  something  to  say  and  did 
not  say  it  well,  Maitland  read  him  with  diffi- 
culty and  held  him  at  a  discount.  That  is  why 
he  loved  Landor  at  his  best,  why  he  loved  Mere- 
dith, and  why  he  often  adored  Hardy,  especially 
in  Hardy's  earlier  works,  before  he  began  to 
''rail  at  the  universe"  and  disturb  him.  I  think 
among  other  living  writers  of  English  fiction  I 
can  hardly  mention  more  than  one  of  whom  he 
spoke  with  much  respect,  and  he  was  Henry 
James.     As  he  was  a  conservative  he  was  espe- 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         299 

cially  a  conservative  critic.  He  found  it  diffi- 
cult to  appreciate  anything  which  was  wholly 
new,  and  the  rising  school  of  Celtic  literature, 
which  means  much,  and  may  mean  more,  in 
English  literature,  did  not  appeal  to  him  greatly. 
He  lived  in  the  past,  even  in  English,  and  often 
went  back  to  Chaucer  and  drank  at  his  well  and 
at  the  everlasting  fountain  of  Malory.  So,  as  I 
have  said,  he  loved  old  Walton.  Boswell  he  read 
yearly  at  least,  for  he  had  an  amazing  admira- 
tion for  old  Johnson,  a  notable  truth-teller. 
The  man  who  could  say  what  he  thought,  and 
say  it  plainly,  was  ever  his  favourite,  although  I 
could  never  induce  him  to  admire  Machiavelli, 
for  the  coldness  of  Machiavelli's  intellect  was  a 
little  too  much  for  him.  The  pure  intellect 
never  appealed  to  Maitland.  I  think  if  he  had 
attempted  'The  Critique  of  Pure  Reason"  he 
would  have  died  before  he  had  learnt  Kant's 
vocabulary.  Yet  I  once  gave  him  a  copy  of  it  in 
the  original.  The  only  very  modern  writer  that 
he  took  to  was  Walt  Whitman,  and  the  trouble 
I  had  in  getting  him  to  see  anything  in  him  was 
amazing,  though  at  last  he  succumbed  and  was 
characteristically  enthusiastic. 

What  he  wanted  in  literature  was  emotion, 
feeling,  and  humour — literature  that  affected 
him  sensuously,  and  made  him  happy,  and  made 
him  forget.     For  it  is  strange  when  one  looks 


300  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

back  at  his  books  to  think  how  much  he  loved 
pure  beauty,  though  he  found  himself  compelled 
to  write,  only  too  often,  of  the  sheer  brutality  of 
modern  civilisation  and  the  foulest  life  of  Lon- 
don. Of  course  he  loved  satire,  and  his  own 
mind  was  essentially  in  some  ways  satiric.  His 
greatest  gift  was  perhaps  that  of  irony,  which  he 
frequently  exercised  at  the  expense  of  his  public. 
I  remember  very  well  his  joy  when  something 
he  had  written  which  was  ironically  intended 
from  the  first  word  to  the  last  was  treated  seri- 
ously by  the  critics.  He  was  reminded,  as  he 
indeed  reminded  me,  of  Samuel  Butler's  "Fair- 
haven,"  that  book  on  Christianity  which  was 
reviewed  by  one  great  religious  paper  as  an 
essay  in  religious  apologetics.  This  recalls  to 
my  mind  the  fact  that  I  have  forgotten  to  say 
how  much  he  loved  Samuel  Butler's  books,  or 
those  with  which  he  was  more  particularly  ac- 
quainted, "Erewhon"  and  "Erewhon  Revisited." 
Anything  which  dug  knives  into  the  gross  stu- 
pidity of  the  mass  of  English  opinion  afforded 
him  the  intensest  gratification.  If  it  attacked 
their  religion  or  their  vanity  he  was  equally  de- 
lighted, and  when  it  came  to  their  hypocrisy — 
in  spite  of  the  defence  he  made  later  in  "The 
Meditations"  of  English  hypocrisy — he  was 
equally  pleased.  In  this  connection  I  am  re- 
minded of  a  very  little  thing  of  no  particular 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         301 

importance  which  occurred  to  him  when  he  was 
upon  one  occasion  at  the  Royal  Academy.  That 
year  Sir  Frederick  Leighton  exhibited  a  very 
fine  decorative  panel  of  a  nude  figure.  While 
Maitland  was  looking  at  it  a  typical  English 
matron  with  three  young  flappers  of  daughters 
passed  him.  One  of  the  girls  stood  in  front  of 
this  nude  and  said,  ^'Oh,  mamma,  what  is  this?" 
Whereupon  her  mother  replied  hurriedly,  "Only 
a  goddess,  my  dear,  only  a  goddess!  Come 
along, — only  a  goddess."  And  he  quoted  to 
himself  and  afterwards  to  me,  from  "Roman 
Women":  "And  yet  I  love  you  not,  nor  ever 
can,  Distinguished  woman  on  the  Pincian!"  If 
I  remember  rightly,  the  notable  address  to  Eng- 
lishwomen in  T.  E.  Brown's  poem  was  published 
separately  in  a  magazine  which  I  brought  to 
him.     It  gave  great  occasion  for  chuckling. 

I  have  not  attempted  to  give  any  far-reaching 
notion  of  all  Maitland's  reading,  but  I  think 
what  I  have  said  will  indicate  not  unfairly  what 
its  reach  was.  What  he  desired  was  to  read  the 
best  that  had  been  written  in  all  western  lan- 
guages ;  and  I  think,  indeed,  that  very  few  men 
have  read  so  much,  although  he  made,  in  some 
ways,  but  little  use  of  it.  Nevertheless  this  life 
among  books  was  his  true  life.  Among  books 
he  lived,  and  among  them  he  would  have  died. 
Had  any  globe-trotting  Gillman  offered  to  show 


302  HENRY  MAITLAND  \ 

him  the  world,  he  would  have  declined,  I  diink, 
to  leave  the  littoral  of  the  Mediterranean, 
though  with  a  book-loving  Gillman  he  might 
have  explored  all  literature. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THERE  have  been  few  men  so  persecuted 
by  Fortune  as  to  lead  lives  of  unhappi- 
ness,  lighted  only  by  transient  gleams  of 
the  sun,  who  are  yet  pursued  beyond  the  grave 
by  outcries  and  misfortune,  but  this  was  un- 
doubtedly the  case  with  Maitland.  Of  course 
he  always  had  notable  ill  luck,  as  men  might  say 
and  indeed  do  say,  but  his  ill  luck  sprang  from 
his  nature  as  well  as  from  the  nature  of  things. 
When  a  man  puts  himself  into  circumstances  to 
which  he  is  equal  he  may  have  misfortunes,  or 
sometimes  disasters,  but  he  has  not  perpetual 
adversity.  Maitland's  nature  was  for  ever 
thrusting  him  into  positions  to  which  he  was  not 
equal.  His  disposition,  his  very  heredity,  seems 
to  have  invited  trouble.  So  out  of  his  first  great 
disaster  sprang  all  the  rest.  He  had  not  been 
equal  to  the  stress  laid  upon  him,  and  in  later 
life  he  was  never  equal  to  the  stress  he  laid  upon 
himself.  This  is  what  ill  luck  is.  It  is  an  in- 
stinctive lack  of  wisdom.  I  think  I  said  some 
chapters  ago  that  I  had  not  entirely  disposed  of 
the  question  of  his  health.     I  return  to  the  sub- 

303 


304  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

ject  with  some  reluctance.  Nevertheless  I  think 
what  I  have  to  say  should  be  said.  It  at  any 
rate  curiously  links  the  last  days  of  Maitland's 
life  to  the  earlier  times  of  his  trouble,  or  so  it 
will  seem  to  physicians.  I  shall  do  no  more 
than  quote  a  few  lines  from  a  letter  which  he 
wrote  to  Lake.  He  says:  ''You  remember  that 
patch  of  skin  disease  on  my  forehead?  Nothing 
would  touch  it;  it  had  lasted  for  more  than  two 
years,  and  was  steadily  extending  itself.  At  last 
a  fortnight  ago  I  was  advised  to  try  iodide  of 
potassium.  Result — perfect  cure  after  week's 
treatment!  I  had  resigned  myself  to  being  dis- 
figured for  the  rest  of  my  life;  the  rapidity  of 
the  cure  is  extraordinary.  I  am  thinking  of 
substituting  iodide  of  potassium  for  cofifee  at 
breakfast  and  wine  at  the  other  meals.  I  am 
also  meditating  a  poem  in  its  praise — which  may 
perhaps  appear  in  the  Fortnightly  Review/' 
Dr.  Lake  replied  to  these  dithyrambs  with  a  let- 
ter which  Maitland  did  not  answer.  There  is  no 
need  to  comment  upon  this  more  particularly; 
it  will  at  any  rate  be  clear  to  those  who  are  not 
uninstructed  in  medicine. 

His  ill  luck  began  early.  It  lasted  even  be- 
yond the  grave.  Some  men  have  accounted  it  a 
calamity  to  have  a  biography  written  of  them. 
The  first  who  said  so  must  have  been  English, 
for  in  this  country  the  absence  of  biographic  art 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         305 

is  rendered  the  more  peculiarly  dreadful  by  the 
existence  in  our  language  of  one  or  two  master- 
pieces. In  some  ways  I  would  very  willingly 
cease  to  speak  now,  for  I  have  written  nearly  all 
that  I  had  in  my  mind,  and  I  know  that  I  have 
spoken  nothing  which  would  really  hurt  him. 
As  I  have  said  in  the  very  first  chapter,  he  had 

,    an  earnest  desire  that  if  anything  were  written 

I  about  him  after  his  death  it  should  be  something 
true.  Still  there  are  some  things  yet  to  be  put 
down,  especially  about  ^^Basil"  and  its  publica- 
tion. He  left  this  book  unfinished:  it  still 
lacked  some  few  chapters  which  would  have 
dealt  with  the  final  catastrophe.     It  fell  to  the 

I  executors  to  arrange  for  the  publication  of  the 
incomplete  book.  As  Maitland  had  left  no 
money,  certainly  not  that  two  thousand  pounds 
which  he  vainly  hoped  for,  there  were  still  his 
children  to  consider;  and  it  was  thought  neces- 
sary, for  reasons  I  do  not  appreciate,  to  get  a 
preface  written  for  the  book  with  a  view,  which 
seemed  to  me  idle,  of  procuring  it  a  great  sale. 

i  It  appears  that  Rivers  offered  to  write  this 
preface  if  it  were  wanted.  What  he  wrote  was 
afterwards  published.  The  executors  did  not 
approve  it,  again  for  reasons  which  I  do  not  ap- 
preciate, for  I  think  that  it  was  on  the  whole  a 
very  admirable  piece  of  work.  Yet  I  do  not 
believe  Rivers  was  sincere  in  the  view  he  took 


I 


306  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

of  ''Basil"  as  a  work  of  art.  In  later  years  he 
acknowledged  as  much  to  me,  but  he  thought  it 
was  his  duty  to  say  everything  that  could  possi- 
bly be  said  with  a  view  of  imposing  it  on  a 
reluctant  public.  The  passage  in  this  article 
mainly  objected  to  was  that  which  speaks  ob- 
scurely of  his  early  life  at  Moorhampton  Col- 
lege and  refers  as  obscurely  to  his  initial  great 
disaster.  The  reference  was  needed,  and  could 
hardly  be  avoided.  Rivers  said  nothing  openly 
but  referred  to  ''an  abrupt  incongruous  reaction 
and  collapse."  This  no  doubt  excited  certain 
curiosities  in  certain  people,  but  seeing  that  so 
many  already  knew  the  truth,  I  cannot  perceive 
what  was  to  be  gained  by  entire  silence.  How- 
ever, this  preface  was  rejected  and  Mr.  Harold 
Edgeworth  was  asked  to  write  another.  This 
he  did,  but  it  was  a  frigid  performance.  The 
writer  acknowledged  his  ignorance  of  much  that 
Maitland  had  written,  and  avowed  his  want  of 
sympathy  with  most  of  it. 

Naturally  enough,  the  trouble  growing  out  of 
this  dispute  gave  rise  to  considerable  comment. 
As  some  theological  buzzards  had  dropped  out 
of  a  murky  sky  upon  Maitland's  corpse,  so  some 
literary  kites  now  found  a  subject  to  gloat  upon. 
Nevertheless  the  matter  presently  passed. 
"Basil,"  unhappily,  was  no  success;  and  if  one 
must  speak  the  truth,  it  was  rightly  a  failure. 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         307 

It  is  curious  and  bitter  to  think  of  that  when  he 
was  dealing  at  the  last  in  some  kind  of  peace  and 
quiet  with  his  one  chosen  subject,  that  he  had 
thought  of  for  so  many  years  and  prepared  for 
so  carefully,  it  should  by  no  means  have  proved 
what  he  believed  it.  There  is,  indeed,  no  such 
proof  as  "Basil"  in  the  whole  history  of  letters 
that  the  writer  was  not  doing  the  work  that  his 
nature  called  for.  Who  that  knows  '^Magna 
Graecia,"  and  who,  indeed,  that  ever  spoke  with 
him,  will  not  feel  that  if  he  had  visited  one  by 
one  all  the  places  that  he  mentions  in  the  book, 
and  had  written  about  them  and  about  the  his- 
torical characters  that  he  hoped  to  realise,  the 
book  might  have  been  as  great  or  even  greater 
than  the  shining  pages  of  "Magna  Graecia"? 
It  was  in  the  consideration  of  these  things,  while 
reviving  the  aspects  of  the  past  that  he  felt  so 
deeply  and  loved  so  much,  that  his  native  and 
natural  genius  came  out.  In  fiction  it  was  only 
when  rage  and  anger  and  disgust  inspired  him 
that  he  could  hope  to  equal  anything  of  the  pas- 
sion which  he  felt  about  his  temperamental  and 
proper  work.  Those  books  in  which  he  let  him- 
self go  perfectly  naturally,  and  those  books 
which  came  out  of  him  as  a  terrible  protest 
against  modern  civilisation,  are  alone  great. 
Yet  it  is  hard  to  speak  without  emotion  and  with- 
out  pain   of   "Basil."     He   believed   in   it  so 


308  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

greatly,  and  yet  believed  in  it  no  more  than  any 
writer  must  while  he  is  at  work.  The  artist's 
own  illusion  of  a  book's  strength  and  beauty  is 
necessary  to  any  accomplishment.  He  must  be- 
lieve with  faith  or  do  nothing.  Maitland  failed 
because  it  was  not  his  real  work. 

In  one  sense  the  great  books  of  his  middle 
period  were  what  writers  and  artists  know  as 
"pot-boilers."  They  were,  indeed,  written  for 
an  actual  living,  for  bread  and  for  cheese  and 
occasionally  a  very  little  butter.  But  they  had 
to  be  written.  He  was  obliged  to  do  something, 
and  did  these  best;  he  could  do  no  other.  He 
was  always  in  exile.  That  was  the  point  in  my 
mind  when  I  wrote  one  long  article  about  him 
in  a  promising  but  passing  magazine  which 
preened  its  wings  in  Bond  Street  and  died  before 
the  end  of  its  first  month.  This  article  I  called 
"The  Exile  of  Henry  Maitland."  There  is 
something  of  the  same  feeling  in  much  that  has 
been  written  of  him  by  men  perhaps  qualified  in 
many  ways  better  than  myself  had  they  known 
him  as  well  as  I  did.  I  have,  I  believe,  spoken 
of  the  able  criticism  Thomas  Sackville  wrote  of 
him  in  the  foreword  of  the  book  of  short  stories 
which  was  published  after  Maitland's  death. 
In  the  Fortnightly  Review  Edwin  Warren  wrote 
a  feeling  and  sympathetic  article  about  him. 
Jacob  Levy  wrote  not  without  discernment  of 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         309 

the  man.  And  of  one  thing  all  these  men 
seemed  tolerably  sure,  that  in  himself  Maitland 
stood  alone.  But  he  only  stood  alone,  I  think, 
in  the  best  work  of  his  middle  period.  And 
even  that  work  was  alien  from  his  native  mind. 
In  an  early  article  written  about  him  while  he 
yet  lived  I  said  that  he  stood  in  a  high  and  soli- 
tary place,  because  he  belonged  to  no  school,  and 
most  certainly  not  to  any  English  school.  No 
[  one  could  imitate,  and  no  one  could  truly  even 
caricature  him.  The  essence  of  his  best  work 
was  that  it  was  founded  on  deep  and  accurate 
knowledge  and  keen  observation.  Its  power  lay 
in  a  bent,  in  a  mood  of  mind,  not  by  any  means 
in  any  subject,  even  though  his  satiric  discussion 
of  what  he  called  the  ^'ignobly  decent"  showed 
his  strength,  and  indirectly  his  inner  character. 
His  very  repugnance  to  his  early  subjects  led 
him  to  choose  them.  He  showed  what  he 
wished  the  world  to  be  by  declaring  and  proving 
that  it  possessed  every  conceivable  opposite  to 
his  desires.  I  pointed  out  some  time  ago,  but 
should  like  to  insist  upon  it  again,  that  in  one 
sense  he  showed  an  instinctive  affinity  for  the 
lucid  and  subtle  Tourgeniev.  There  is  no  more 
intensely  depressing  book  in  the  entire  Eng- 
lish language  than  ^'Isabel."  The  hero's  desires 
reached  to  the  stars,  but  he  was  not  able  to  steal 
or  take  so  much  as  a  farthing  rushlight.     Not 


310  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

even  Demetri  Roudine,  that  futile  essence  of 
futility,  equals  this,  Maitland's  literary  child  of 
bitter,  unable  ambitions.  These  Russians  in- 
deed were  the  writers  with  whom  Maitland  had 
most  sympathy.  They  moved  what  Zola  had 
never  been  able  to  stir  in  him,  for  he  was  never 
a  Zolaist,  either  in  mind  or  method.  No  man 
without  a  style  could  really  influence  him  for 
more  than  a  moment.  Even  his  beloved  Balzac, 
fecund  and  insatiable,  had  no  lasting  hold  upon 
him,  much  as  he  admired  the  man's  ambitions, 
his  unparalleled  industry,  his  mighty  construc- 
tion. For  Balzac  was  truly  architectonic,  even 
if  barbarous,  and  though  these  constructions  of 
his  are  often  imaginary  and  his  perspectives  a 
mystery.  But  great  construction  is  obviously  \\ 
alien  from  Maitland.  He  wanted  no  elaborate 
architecture  to  do  his  thinking  in.  He  would 
have  been  contented  in  a  porch,  or  preferably  in 
a  cloister. 

I  have  declared  that  his  greatest  book  is  "The 
Exile" — I  mean  his  greatest  book  among  his 
novels.  To  say  it  is  a  masterpiece  is  for  once 
not  to  abuse  the  word;  for  it  is  intense, 
deeply  psychological,  moving,  true.  ''Uana- 
tomia  presuppone  il  cadavere/^  says  Gabriele 
D'Annunzio,  but  "The  Exile"  is  intolerable  and 
wonderful  vivisection.  Yet  men  do  bleed  and 
live,  and  the  protagonist  in  this  book — in  much. 


i 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         311 

in  very  much,  Henry  Maitland — bleeds  but  will 
not  die.  He  was  born  out  of  the  leisured  classes 
and  resented  it  with  an  incredible  bitterness^ 
with  a  bitterness  unparalleled  in  literature.  I 
know  that  on  one  occasion  Maitland  spoke  to  me 
with  a  certain  joy  of  somebody  who  had  written 
to  him  about  his  books  and  had  selected  ''The 
Exile"  as  the  greatest  of  them.  I  think  he  knew 
it  was  great.  It  was,  of  course,  an  ineffable  fail- 
ure from  the  commercial  point  of  view. 

On  more  than  one  occasion,  as  it  was  known 
that  I  was  acquainted  with  Maitland,  men  asked 
me  to  write  about  him.  I  never  did  so  without 
asking  his  permission  to  do  it.  This  happened 
once  in  1895.  ^^  answered  me:  "What  ob- 
jection could  I  possibly  have,  unless  it  were  that 
I  should  not  like  to  hear  you  reviled  for  log- 
rolling? But  it  seems  to  me  that  you  might  well 
write  an  article  which  would  incur  no  such 
charge;  and  indeed,  by  so  doing,  you  would 
render  me  a  very  great  service.  For  I  have  in 
mind  at  present  a  careful  and  well-written  at- 
tack in  the  current  Spectator,  Have  you  seen 
it?  Now  I  will  tell  you  what  my  feelings  are 
about  this  frequent  attitude  in  my  critics." 

Maitland's  views  upon  critics  and  reviewing 
were  often  somewhat  astounding.  He  resented 
their  folly  very  bitterly.  Naturally  enough,  we 
often  spoke  of  reviewers,  for  both  of  us,  in  a 


312  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

sense,  had  some  grievances.  Mine,  however, 
were  not  bitter.  Luckily  for  me,  I  sometimes 
did  work  which  appealed  more  to  the  general, 
while  his  appeal  was  always  to  the  particular. 
Apropos  of  a  review  of  one  of  Rivers'  books  he 
says:  "I  have  also,  unfortunately,  seen  the 
.  Now,  can  you  tell  me  (in  moments  of  ex- 
treme idleness  one  wishes  to  know  such  things) 
who  the  people  are  who  review  fiction  for  the 

?     Are  they  women,  soured  by  celibacy, 

and  by  ineffectual  attempts  to  succeed  as 
authors?  Even  as  they  treat  you  this  time  they 
have  consistently  treated  me — one  continuous 
snarl  and  sneer.  They  are  beastly  creatures — I 
can  think  of  no  other  term." 

It  was  unfortunate  that  he  took  these  things  so 
seriously,  for  nobody  knows  so  well  as  the  re- 
viewers that  their  work  is  not  serious.  Yet,  ac- 
cording to  them  the  general  effect  of  Maitland's 
books,  especially  ''Jubilee,"  was  false,  mislead- 
ing, and  libellous;  and  was  in  essence  caricature. 
One  particular  critic  spoke  of  ''the  brutish  stupe- 
faction of  his  men  and  women,"  and  said,  "his 
realism  inheres  only  in  his  rendering  of  detail." 
Now  Maitland  declared  that  the  writer  ex- 
hibited a  twofold  ignorance — first  of  the  life  he 
depicted,  and  again  of  the  books  in  which  he 
depicted  it.  Maitland  went  on  to  say:  "He 
— the  critic — speaks  specially  of  'Jubilee,'  so  for 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         313 

the  moment  we  will  stick  to  that.  I  have  se- 
lected from  the  great  mass  of  lower  middle-class 
life  a  group  of  people  who  represent  certain  of 
its  grossnesses,  weaknesses,  &c.,  peculiar  to  our 
day.  Now  in  the  first  place,  this  group  of  peo- 
ple, on  its  worst  side,  represents  a  degradation 
of  which  the  critic  has  obviously  no  idea.  In 
the  second  place,  my  book,  if  properly  read,  con- 
tains abundant  evidence  of  good  feeling  and 
right  thinking  in  those  members  of  the  group 
who  are  not  hopelessly  base.  Pass  to  instances: 
The  seniors  live  a  .  .  .  life  unglorified  by  a 
single  fine  emotion  or  elevating  instinct.'  In- 
deed? What  about  Mr.  Ward,  who  is  there 
precisely  to  show  that  there  can  be,  and  are, 
these  emotions  and  instincts  in  individuals?  Of 
the  young  people  (to  say  not  a  word  about 
Nancy,  at  heart  an  admirable  woman) ,  how  is  it 
possible  to  miss  the  notes  of  fine  character  in 
poor  Halley?  Is  not  the  passionate  love  of 
one's  child  an  'elevating  instinct'?  nor  yet  a  fine 
emotion?  Why,  even  Nancy's  brother  shows 
at  the  end  that  favourable  circumstances  could 
bring  out  in  him  gentleness  and  goodness." 

There  indeed  spoke  Maitland.  He  felt  that 
everything  was  circumstance,  and  that  for  nine 
hundred  and  ninety-nine  out  of  a  thousand  cir- 
cumstance was  truly  too  much,  as  it  had  been 
for  him.     It  appears  that  the  critic  added  that 


314  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE  / 

the  general  effect  of  the  book  was  false;  and 
Maitland  replied  that  it  would  be  so  to  a  very 
rapid  skimmer  of  the  book,  precisely  as  the  gen- 
eral effect  upon  a  rapid  observer  of  the  people 
themselves  would  be  false.  He  was  enraged  to 
think  that  though  people  thought  it  worth  while 
to  write  at  length  about  his  books,  they  would 
not  take  the  trouble  to  study  them  seriously. 
He  added:  "In  this  section  of  the  lower  mid- 
dle class  the  good  is  not  on  the  surface;  neither 
will  it  be  found  on  the  surface  of  my  narrative." 
In  this  letter  he  went  on  to  say  something  more 
of  his  books  in  general.  Apropos  of  a  para- 
graph written  by  Mr.  Glass  about  his  work  as 
a  whole,  he  said:  "My  books  deal  with  people 
of  many  social  strata;  there  are  the  vile  working 
class,  the  aspiring  and  capable  working  class, 
the  vile  lower  middle,  the  aspiring  and  capable 
lower  middle,  and  a  few  representatives  of  the 
upper  middle  class.  My  characters  range  from 
the  vileness  of  'Arry  Parson  to  the  genial  and 
cultured  respectability  of  Mr.  Comberbatch. 
There  are  books  as  disparate  as  The  Under 
World'  and  The  Unchosen.'  But  what  I  de- 
sire to  insist  upon  is  this,  that  the  most  character- 
istic, the  most  important,  part  of  my  work  is  that 
which  deals  with  a  class  of  young  men  distinctive 
of  our  time — well-educated,  fairly  bred,  but 
without  money.     It  is  this  fact,  as  I  gather  from 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         315 

reviews  and  conversation,  of  the  poverty  of  my 
people  which  tells  against  their  recognition  as 
civilised  beings.  ^Oh,'  said  some  one  to  Butler, 
Mo  ask  Mr.  Maitland  to  make  his  people  a  little 
better  off.'     There  you  have  it." 

And  there  one  has  also  the  source  of  Mait- 
land's  fountain  of  bitterness.  He  went  on  to 
say:  ''Now  think  of  some  of  these  young  men, 
Hendon,  Gififord,  Medwin,  Pick,  Early,  Hill- 
ward,  Mallow.  Do  you  mean  to  say  that  books 
containing  such  a  number  of  such  men  deal,  first 
and  foremost,  with  the  commonplace  and  the 
sordid?  Why,  these  fellows  are  the  very  re- 
verse of  commonplace;  most  of  them  are  mar- 
tyred by  the  fact  of  possessing  uncommon  en- 
dowments. Is  it  not  so?  This  side  of  my 
work,  to  me  the  most  important,  I  have  never 
yet  seen  recognised.  I  suppose  Glass  would 
class  these  men  as  'at  best  genteel,  and  not  so 
very  genteel.'  Why,  'ods  bodikins!  there's  noth- 
ing in  the  world  so  hateful  to  them  as  gentility. 
But  you  know  all  this,  and  can  you  not  write  of 
it  rather  trenchantly?  I  say  nothing  about  my 
women.  That  is  a  moot  point.  But  surely 
there  are  some  of  them  who  help  to  give  colour 
to  the  groups  I  draw."  The  end  of  the  letter 
was :  "I  write  with  a  numbed  hand.  I  haven't 
been  warm  for  weeks.  This  weather  crushes 
me.     Let  me  have  a  line  about  this  letter." 


316  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

The  sort  of  poverty  which  crushed  the  aspir- 
ing is  the  keynote  to  the  best  work  he  did.  He 
knew  it,  and  was  right  in  knowing  it.  He 
played  all  these  parts  himself.  In  many  pro- 
tean forms  Maitland  himself  is  discerned  under 
the  colour  and  character  of  his  chosen  names; 
and  so  far  as  he  depicted  a  class  hitherto  un- 
touched, or  practically  untouched,  in  England, 
as  he  declares,  he  was  a  great  writer  of  fiction. 
But  he  was  not  a  romantic  writer.  There  were 
some  books  of  romance  he  loved  greatly.  We 
often  and  often  spoke  of  Murger's  "Vie  de 
Boheme."  I  do  not  think  there  was  any  passage 
in  that  book  which  so  appealed  to  him  as  when 
Rodolphe  worked  in  his  adventitious  fur-coat  in 
his  windy  garret,  declaring  genially:  "Main- 
tenant  le  thermometre  va  etre  furieusement 
vexe."  Nevertheless,  as  I  have  said  before,  he 
knew,  and  few  knew  so  well,  the  very  bitter  truth 
that  Murger  only  vaguely  indicated  here  and 
there  in  scattered  passages.  In  the  "Vie  de 
Boheme"  these  characters  "range"  themselves  at 
last;  but  mostly  such  men  did  not.  They  went 
under,  they  died  in  the  hospital,  they  poisoned 
themselves,  they  blew  out  their  brains,  they  sank 
and  became  degraded  parasites  of  an  uncompre- 
hending bourgeoisie. 

I  spoke  some  time  back  of  the  painful  hour 
when  Maitland  came  to  me  to  declare  his  con- 


OF  HENRY  MAITLAND         317 

sidered  opinion  that  I  myself  could  not  write 
successful  fiction.  It  is  an  odd  thing  that  I 
never  returned  the  compliment  in  any  way,  for 
though  I  knew  he  could,  and  did,  write  great  fic- 
tion, I  knew  his  best  work  would  not  have  been 
fiction  in  other  circumstances.  Out  of  martyr- 
dom may  come  great  things,  but  not  out  of 
martyrdom  spring  the  natural  blossoms  of  the 
natural  mind.  That  he  lived  in  the  devil's  twi- 
light between  the  Dan  of  Camberwell  and  the 
Beersheba  of  Camden  Town,  when  his  natural 
environment  should  have  been  Italy,  and  Rome, 
or  Sorrento,  is  an  unfading  tragedy.  Only  once 
or  twice  in  his  life  did  a  spring  or  summer  come 
to  him  in  which  he  might  grow  the  flowers  he 
loved  best  and  knew  to  be  his  natural  destiny. 
The  greatest  tragedy  of  all,  to  my  mind,  is  that 
final  tragedy  of  ''Basil"  where  at  last,  after  long 
years  of  toil  in  fiction  while  fiction  was  yet  neces- 
sary to  his  livelihood,  he  was  compelled  by  his 
training  to  put  into  the  form  of  a  novel  a  theme 
not  fit  for  such  treatment  save  in  the  hands  of  a 
native  and  easy  story-teller. 

I  have  said  nothing,  or  little  except  by  impli- 
cation, of  the  man's  style.  In  many  ways  it  was 
notable  and  even  noble.  To  such  a  literary  in- 
telligence, informed  with  all  the  learning  of  the 
past  towards  which  he  leant,  much  of  his  style 
was  inevitable ;  it  was  the  man  and  his  own.     For 


318  THE  PRIVATE  LIFE 

the  greater  part  it  is  lucid  rather  than  sparkling, 
clear,  if  not  cold;  yet  with  a  subdued  rhythm, 
the  result  of  much  Latin  and  more  Greek,  for 
the  metres  of  the  Greek  tragedies  always  inspired 
him  with  their  noble  rhythms.  Though  he  was 
often  cold  and  bitter,  especially  in  his  employ- 
ment of  irony,  of  which  he  is  the  only  complete 
master  in  English  literature  except  Samuel  But- 
ler, he  could  rise  to  heights  of  passionate  descrip- 
tion ;  and  here  and  there  a  sense  of  luxury  tinges 
his  words  with  Tyrian  purple — and  this  in  spite 
of  all  his  sense  of  restraint,  which  was  more 
marked  than  that  of  almost  any  living  writer. 

When  I  think  of  it  all,  and  consider  his  partly 
wasted  years,  I  even  now  wonder  how  it  was  he 
induced  himself  to  deal  with  the  life  he  knew  so 
well ;  but  while  that  commercialism  exists  which 
he  abhorred  as  much  as  he  abhorred  the  society 
in  which  it  flourishes,  there  seems  no  other  prac- 
ticable method  for  a  man  of  letters  to  attain 
speech  and  yet  to  live.  I  often  declared  that 
fiction  as  we  wrote  it  was  truly  diagnostic  of  a 
disordered  and  unnecessarily  degraded  form  of 
civilisation;  and  he  replied  with  deep  feeling 
that  to  him  the  idylls  of  Theocritus,  of  Moschus, 
the  simple  tragedies,  the  natural  woes  and  joys 
of  men  who  ploughed  the  soil  or  worked  at  the 
winepress,  were  the  truest  and  most  vivid  forms 
and  subjects  of  Art.     Neither  before  his  death 


HENRY  MAITLAND  319 

nor  after  did  he  attain  the  artist's  true  and  great 
reward  of  recognition  in  the  full  sense  that 
would  have  satisfied  him  even  if  he  had  re- 
mained poor.  Nevertheless  there  were  some 
who  knew.  There  are  perhaps  a  few  more  who 
know  now  that  he  is  gone  and  cannot  hear  them. 
Popularity  he  never  hoped  for,  and  never  will 
attain,  but  he  has  a  secure  place  in  the  hierarchy 
of  the  literature  of  England  which  he  loved. 
But  he  appeals  now,  as  he  appealed  while  he 
lived,  not  to  the  idle  and  the  foolish,  not  to  the 
fashionable  mob,  but  to  the  more  august  tribunal 
of  those  who  have  the  sympathy  which  comes 
from  understanding. 


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